Skip to main content

Full text of "The Agrarian Crusade: A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics"

See other formats 


Google 



This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project 

to make the world's books discoverable online. 

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject 

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books 

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. 

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the 

publisher to a library and finally to you. 

Usage guidelines 

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the 
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to 
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. 
We also ask that you: 

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for 
personal, non-commercial purposes. 

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine 
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the 
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. 

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find 
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. 

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just 
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other 
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of 
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner 
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe. 

About Google Book Search 

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers 
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web 

at |http: //books .google .com/I 



' 1 


.•i«», * ^^ 


^<k^ 


■■ 








^1 


S£''C Jti^-^JS 


1 'Jt""'*"*'^ «i 


P 


m 


^K'^uJU'b.^ 


m."'^.I^4i 


W^ 


''"•^S 


H^ ' 




M^ 


ntu 


^^^HL^) 


-MwRSjJjiK^ 


ffi 


1 






^^Na 


^^^H 




' '^3i&?'./^si^iil^ 


!^^0 


^^H 






1 


1 



A TYPICAL CARTOON OF THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



THE 
AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

A CHRONICLE OF 

THE FARMER IN POLITICS 

BY SOLON J. ^UCK 



s 


i 


m 




! 


LVXET 


^m 


LVXET 

m 


VERITAS 


VERITAS 





NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

TORONTO: GLASGOW. BROOK & CO. 

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1921 



f73 

-381087 

Copyright, 1920, by Yale University Press 



• • 









» »^ * • • * 



• : * 



TEXTBOOK EDITION 






THE CHRONICLES 

OF AMERICA SERIES 

ALLEN JOHNSON 

EDITOR 

GERHARD R. LOMER 

CHARLES W. JEFFERYS 

ASSISTANT EDITORS 



PREFACE 

Rapid growth accompanied by a somewhat pamf ul 
readjustment has been one of the leading charac- 
teristics of the history of the United States during 
the last half century. In the West the change has 
been so swift and spectacular as to approach a com- 
plete metamorphosis. With the passing of the 
frontier has gone something of the old freedom and 
the old opportunity; and the inevitable change has 
brought forth inevitable protest, particularly from 
the agricultural class. Simple farming communi- 
ties have wakened to find themselves complex in- 
dustrial regions in which the farmers have fre- 
quently lost their former preferred position. The 
result has been a series of radical agitations on 
the part of farmers determined to better their lot. 
These movements have manifested different de- 
grees of coherence and intelligence, but all have had 
something of the same purpose and spirit, and all 

may justly be considered as stages ol \}cl'^ ^^^ 

«. 

vu 



PREFACE 

.■nfinished agrarian crusade. This book is an at- 
empt to sketch the course and to reproduce the 
spirit of that crusade from its inception with the 
Granger movement, through the Greenback and 
Populist phases, to a climax in the battle for free 
silver. 

In the preparation of the chapters dealing with 
Populism I received invaluable assistance from my 
colleague. Professor Lester B. Shippee of the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota; and I am indebted to my 
wife for aid at every stage of the work, especially 
in the revision of the manuscript. 

Solon J. Buck, 

Minnesota Historical Socnar* 
St. Paul. 



CONTENTS 

I. THE INCEPTION OP THE GRANGE Page 1 

^ II. THE RISING SPIRIT OP UNREST " 11 

"*ra. THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD 

TIDE " 25 

IV. CURBING THE RAILROADS " 43 

^ V. THE COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVE- 
MENT " 60 / 

VI. THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE " 71 2- 

Vn. THE PUGHT OP THE FARMER " 99 

Vm. THE FARMERS* ALLIANCE •* 111 

IX. THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED " 126 

X. THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 " 142 i 

XI. THE SILVER ISSUE " I54 ^ 

Xn. THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS " 172 jT 

XIIL THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM " I94 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 203 

INDEX «< 207 



IX 



ILLUSTRATION 

A TYPICAL CARTOON OF THE AGRA- 
RIAN CRUSADE 

Redrawn by Charles Lennox Wright from 
a lithograph issued by The Prairie Farmer, 
Chicago, at the time of the Farmers' 
movement. Frontispiece 



zi 



> 



.♦ 






THE AGRARIAN €RUSADE 



• * 



CHAPTER I 






« s 






THE INCEPTION OP THE ORANGE 



%• 



When President Johnson authorized the Commis-^ 
sioner of Agriculture, in 1866, to send a clerk in his 
bureau on a trip through the Southern States to 
procure "statistical and other information from 
those States, " he could scarcely have foreseen that 
this trip would lead to a movement among the 
farmers, which, in varying forms, would affect the 
political and economic life of the nation for half a 
century. The clerk selected for this mission, one 
Oliver Hudson Kelley, was something more than a 
mere collector of data and compiler of statistics : he 
was a keen observer and a thinker. Kelley was 
bom in Boston of a good Yankee family that could 
boast kinship with Oliver Wendell Holmes and 
Judge Samuel Sewall. At the age of twentY-AXai^^ 



2 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

he journeyed to Iowa, where l^h married. Then 
with his wife he went on to .Minnesota, settled in 

Elk River Township, and'^equired some first-hand 

.*• ■ ** 

familiarity with agrif^ultiire. At the time of Kel- 
ley's service in thjei^SLgricultm'al bm'eau he was forty 
years old, a man <?if dignified presence, with a full 
beard alreaiiy, turning white, the high broad fore- 
head of a'philosopher, and the eager eyes of an en- 
thusiast/-, ^An engine with too much steam on all 
the tfme" — so one of his friends characterized 
.IH^i-and the abnormal energy which he displayed 
on' the trip through the South justifies the figure. 
Kelley had had enough practical experience in 
agriculture to be sympathetically aware of the 
diflSculties of farm life in the period immediately 
following the Civil War. Looking at the Southern 
farmers not as a hostile Northerner would but as a 

^ fellow agriculturist, he was struck with the distress- 
ing conditions which prevailed. It was not merely 
the farmers* economic difiSculties which he noticed, 
for such diflSculties were to be expected in the South 
in the adjustment after the great con^ct; it was 
rather their blind disposition to do as their grand- 
fathers had done, their antiquated methods of agri- 

^ culture, and, most of all, their apathy. Pondering 
on this attitude, Kelley decided that it was fostered 



THE INCEPTION OP THE GRANGE 3 

if not caused by the lack of social opportunities 
which made the existence of the farmer such a 
drear monotony that he became practically incapa- 
ble of changing his outlook on life or his attitude 
toward his work. 

Being essentially a man of action, Kelley did not 
stop with the mere observation of these evils but 
cast about to find a remedy. In doing so» he came 
ip the conclusion that a national secret order of 
farmers resembling the Masonic order, of which he 
was a member, might serve to bind the farmers to- 
gether for purposes of social and intellectual ad- 
vancement. After he returned from the South, 
Kelley discussed the plan in Boston with his niece. 
Miss Carrie Hall, who argued quite sensibly that 
women should be admitted to full membership in 
the order, if it was to accomplish the desired ends. 
Kelley accepted her suggestion and went West to 
spend the summer in farming and dreaming of his 
project. The next year found him again in Wash- 
ington, but this time as a clerk in the Post OflSce 
Department. 

During the summer and fall of 1867 Kelley in- 
terested some of his associates in his scheme. As 
a result seven men — "one fruit grower and six 
government clerks, equally distributed among the 



4 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Post Office, Treasury, and Agricultural Depart- 
ments " — are usually recognized as the founders of 
the Patrons of Husbandry, or, as the order is more 
commonly called, the Grange. These men, all of 
whom but one had been born on farms, were O. H. 
Kelley and W. M. Ireland of the Post Office De- 
partment, William Saunders and the Reverend A. 
B. Grosh of the Agricultural Bureau, the Reverend 
John Trimble and J. R. Thompson of the Treasury 
Department, and F. M. McDowell, a pomologist of 
Wayne, New York. Kelley and Ireland planned a 
ritual for the society; Saunders interested a few 
farmers at a meeting of the United States Pomo- 
logical Society in St. Louis in August, and secured 
the cooperation of McDowell; the other men helped 
these four in corresponding with interested farmers 
and in perfecting the ritual. On December 4, 1867, 
having framed a constitution and adopted the motto 
Esto perpetuay they met and constituted themselves 
the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry. 
Saimders was to be Master; Thompson, Lecturer; 
Ireland, Treasurer; and Kelley, Secretary. 

It is interesting to note, in view of the subse- 
quent political activity in which the movement for 
agricultural organization became inevitably in- 
volved, that the founders of the Grange looked for 



THE INCEPTION OP THE GRANGE 5 

advantages to come to the farmer through intel- 
lectual and social intercoursernot through political^ 
action.^ Their purpose was "the advancement of 
agriculture, " but they expected that advancement 
to be an educative rather than a legislative process. 
It was to that end, for instance, that they provided 
for a Grange "Lecturer,*' a man whose business it 
was to prepare for each meeting a program apart 
from the prescribed ritual — perhaps a paper read 
by one of the members or an address by a visiting 
speaker. With this plan for social and intellectual 
advancement, then, the founders of the Grange set 
out to gain members. 

During the first four years the order grew slow- 
ly, partly because of the mistakes of the founders, 
partly because of the innate conservatism and sus- 
picion of the average farmer. The first local Grange 
was organized in Washington. It was made up 
largely of government clerks and their wives and 
served less to advance the cause of agriculture than 
to test the ritual. In February, 1868, Kelley re- 
signed his clerkship in the Post Office Department 
and turned his whole attention to the organization 
of the new order. His colleagues, in optimism or 
irony, voted him a salary of two thousand dollars a 
year and traveling expenses, to be paid from the 



e THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

receipts of any subordinate Granges he should es- 
tablish. Thus authorized, Kelley bought a ticket 
for Harrisburgy and with two dollars and a half in 
his pocket, started out to work his way to Minne- 
sota by organizing Granges. On his way out he 
sold four dispensations for the establishment of 
branch organizations — three for Granges in Har- 
risburg, Columbus, and Chicago, which came to 
nothing, and one for a Grange in Fredonia, New 
York, which was the first regular, active, and per- 
manent local organization. This, it is important 
to note, was established as a result of correspond- 
ence with a farmer of that place, and in by far the 
smallest town of the four. Kelley seems at first to 
have made the mistake of attempting to establish 
the order in the large cities, where it had no native 
soil in which to grow. 

When Kelley revised his plan and began to work 
from his farm in Minnesota and among neighbors 
whose main interest was in agriculture, he was 
more successful. His progress was not, however, 
so marked as to insure his salary and expenses; in 
fact, the whole history of these early years repre- 
sents the hardest kind of struggle against financial 
difficulties. Later, Kelley wrote of this difficult 
period : "If all great enterprises, to be permanent, 



THE INCEPTION OP THE GRANGE 7 

must necessarily start from small beginnings^ our 
Order is all right. Its foundation was laid on solid 
nothing — the rock of poverty — and there is no 
harder material." At times the persistent secre- 
tary found himself unable even to buy postage for 
his circular letters. His friends at Washington be- 
gan to lose interest in the work of an order with 
a treasury "so empty that a five-cent stamp would 
need an introduction before it would feel at home 
in it." Their only letters to Kelley during this try- 
ing time were written to remind him of bills owed 
by the order. The total debt was not more than 
$150, yet neither the Washington members nor 
Kelley could find funds to liquidate it. "My dear 
brother," wrote Kelley to Ireland, "you must not 
swear when the printer comes in. . . . When they 
come in to * dun * ask them to take a seat; light your 
pipe; lean back in a chair, and suggest to them that 
some plan be adopted to bring in ten or twenty 
members, and thus furnish funds to pay their bills." 
A note of $39, in the hands of one Mr. Bean, caused 
the members in Washington further embarrass- 
ment at this time and occasioned a gleam of humor 
in one of Kelley's letters. Bean's calling on the 
men at Washington, he wrote, at least reminded 
them of the absentee, and to be cursed by an old 



8 THE IgRARIAN CRUSADE 

friend was better than to be forgotten. "I sug- 
gest," he continued, "that Granges use black and 
white Beans for ballots." 

In spite of all his difficulties, Kelley stubbornly 
continued his endeavor and kept up the fiction of a 
powerful central order at the capital by circulat- 
ing photographs of the founders and letters which 
spoke in glowing terms of the great national organi- 
zation of the Patrons of Husbandry. "It must be 
advertised as vigorously as if it were a patent medi- 
cine, " he said; and to that end he wrote articles for 
leading agricultural papers, persuaded them to pub- 
lish the constitution of the Grange, and inserted 
from time to time press notices which kept the or- 
ganization before the public eye. In M ay, 1 868, 
came the first fruits of all this correspondence and 
advertisement — the establishment of a Grange at 
Newton, Iowa. In September, the first permanent 
Grange in Minnesota, the North Star Grange, was 
established at St. Paul with the assistance of Colonel 
D. A. Robertson. This gentleman and his associ- 
ates interested themselves in spreading the order. 
They revised the Grange circulars to appeal to the 
farmer's pocketbook, emphasizing the fact that the 
order offered a means of protection against corpora- 
tions and opportunities for cooperative buying and 



THE INCEPTION OF THE GRANGE 9 

selling. This practical appeal was more eflFective 
than the previous idealistic propaganda: two addi- 
tional Granges were established before the end of 
the year; a state Grange was constituted early in 
thie next year; and by the end of 1869 there were in 
Minnesota thirty-seven active Granges. In the 
spring of 1869 Kelley went East and, after visiting 
the thriving Grange in Fredonia, he made his report 
at Washington to the members of the National 
Grange, who listened perfunctorily, passed a few 
laws, and relapsed into indiflFerence after this first 
regular annual session. 

But however indifferent the members of the Na- 
tional Grange might be as to the fate of the organi- 
zation they had so irresponsibly fathered, Kelley 
was zealous and untiring in its behalf. That the 
founders did not deny their parenthood was enough 
for him; he returned to his home with high hopes 
for the future. With the aid of his niece he carried 
on an indefatigible correspondence which soon 
brought tangible retiuns. In October, 1870, Kel- 
ley moved his headquarters to Washington. By 
the end of the year the Order had penetrated nine 
States of the Union, and correspondence looking to 
its estabUshment in seven more States was well 
imder way. Though Granges had been planted as 



10 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

far east as Vermont and New Jersey and as far 
south as Mississippi and South Carolina, the life of 
the order as yet centered in Minnesota, Iowa, Wis- 
consin, Illinois, and Indiana. These were the only 
States in which, in its four years of activity the 
Grange had really taken root; in other States only 
sporadic local Granges sprang up. The method of 
organization, however, had been found and tested. 
When a few active subordinate Granges had been 
established in a State, they convened as a tempor- 
ary state Grange, the master of which appointed 
deputies to organize other subordinate Granges 
throughout the State. The initiation fees, gener- 
ally three dollars for men and fifty cents for women, 
paid the expenses of organization — fifteen dollars 
to the deputy, and not infrequently a small sum to 
the state Grange. What was left went into the 
treasury of the local Grange. Thus by the end of 
1871 the ways and means of spreading the Grange 
had been devised. All that was now needed was 
some impelling motive which should urge the 
farmers to enter and support the organization. 



CHAPTER n 

THE KISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 

The decade of the seventies witnessed the subsid- 
ence, if not the solution, of a problem which had 
vexed American history for half a century — the 
reconciliation of two incompatible social and eco- 
nomic systems, the North and the South. It wit- 
nessed at the same time the rise of another great 
problem, even yet unsolved — the preservation of ^ 
equality of opportunity, of democracy, economic as 
well as political, in the face of the rising power and 
influence of great accumulations and combinations 
of wealth. Almost before the battle smoke of the 
Civil War had rolled away, dissatisfaction with 
prevailing conditions both political and economic 
began to show itself. 

The close of the war naturally found the Repub- 
lican or Union party in control throughout the 
North. Branded with the opprobrium of having 

opposed the conduct of the war, the Democratic 

11 



12 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

party remained impotent for a number of years; 
and Ulysses S. Grant, the nation's greatest military 
hero, was easily elected to the presidency on the 
Republican ticket in 1868. In the latter part of 
Grant's first term, however, hostility began to mani- 
fest itself among the Republicans themselves to- 
ward the politicians in control at Washington. 
Several causes tended to alienate from the Presi- 
dent and his advisers the sympathies of many of 
the less partisan and less prejudiced RepubUcans 
throughout the North. Charges of corruption and 
maladministration were rife and had much f ounda- 
tion in truth. Even if Grant himself was not con- 
sciously dishonest in his application of the spoils 
system and in his willingness to receive reward in 
return for political favors, he certainly can be 
justly charged with the disposition to trust too 
blindly in his friends and to choose men for public 
oflBce rather because of his personal preferences 
than because of their qualifications for positions 
of trust. 

Grant's enemies declared, moreover, with con- 
siderable truth that the man was a military auto- 
crat, unfit for the highest civil position in a democ- 
racy. His high-handed policy in respect to Recon- 
struction in the South evoked opposition from those 



THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST IS 

Northern Republicans whose critical sense was not 
entirely blinded by sectional prejudice and passion. 
The keener-sighted of the Northerners began to 
suspect that Reconstruction in the South often 
amounted to little more than the looting of the 
governments of the Southern States by the greedy 
freedmen and the unscrupulous carpetbaggers, with 
the troops of the United States standing by to 
protect the looters. In 1871, under color of neces- 
sity arising from the intimidation of voters in a few 
sections of the South, Congress passed a stringent 
act, empowering the President to suspend the writ^ 
of habeas corpus and to use the military at any time 
to suppress disturbances or attempts to intimidate 
voters. This act, in the hands of radicals, gave 
the carpetbag governments of the Southern States 
practicajjy unlimited powers. Any citizens who 
worked against the existing administrations, how- 
ever peacefully, might be charged with intimida- 
tion of voters and prosecuted under the new act. 
Thus these radical governments were made practi- 
cally self-perpetuating. When their corruption, 
wastefulness, and ineflBciency became evident, 
many people in the North frankly condemned them 
and the Federal Government which continued to 
support them. 



14 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

This dissatisfaction with the Administration on 
the part of Republicans and independents came to 
a head in 1872 in the Liberal-Republican move-^ 
ment. As early as 1870 a group of Republicans in 
Missouri, disgusted by the excesses of the radicals 
in that State in the proscription of former Con- 
federate sympathizers, had led a bolt from the 
party, had nominated B. Gratz Brown for governor, 
and, with the assistance of the Democrats, had won 
the election. The real leader of this movement 
was Senator Carl Schurz, under whose influence 
the new party in Missouri declared not only for the 
removal of political disabilities but also for tariff 
revision and civil service reform and manifested 
opposition to the alienation of the public domain 
to private corporations and to all schemes for the 
repudiation of any part of the national debt. Simi- 
lar splits in the Republican party took place soon 
afterwards in other States, and in 1872 the Missouri 
Liberals called a convention to meet at Cincinnati 
for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the 
presidency. 

The new party was a coalition of rather diverse 
elements. Prominent tariff reformers, members of 
the Free Trade League, such as David A. Wells and 
Edward L. Godkin of the Nation^ advocates of civil 



THE RISING SPmrr of unrest 15 

service reform, of whom Carl Schiirz was a leading 
representative, and especially opponents of the re- 
construction measures of the Administration, such 
as Judge David Davis and Horace Greeley, saw 
an opportunity to promote their favorite policies 
through this new party organization. To these 
sincere reformers were soon added such disgruntled 
politicians as A. G. Curtin of Pennsylvania and 
R. E. Fenton of New York, who sought revenge for 
the support which the Administration had given 
to their personal rivals. The principal bond of / 
union was the common desire to prevent the reelec- ) ^ 
tion of Grant. The platform adopted by the Cin-" 
dnnati convention reflected the composition of the 
party. Opening with a bitter denunciation of the 
President, it declared in no uncertain terms for civil 
service reform and the immediate and complete re- 
moval of political disabilities. On the tariff, how- 
ever, the party could come to no agreement; the 
free traders were unable to overcome the opposi- 
tion of Horace Greeley and his protectionist fol- 
lowers; and the outcome ^as the reference of the 
question "to the people in their congressional 
districts and the decision of Congress." 

The leading candidates for nomination for the 
presidency were Charles Francis Adams, David 



16 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Davis, Horace Greeley, Lyman Trumbull, and B. 
Gratz Brown. From these men, as a result of 
manipulation, the convention unhappily selected 
the one least suited to lead the party to victory — 

* Horace Greeley. The only hope of success for the 
movement was in cooperation with that very Demo- 
cratic party whose principles, policies, and leaders, 
Greeley in his editorials had unsparingly condemned 

f for years. His extreme protectionism repeUed not 

^\ only the Democrats but the tariflf reformers who 
had played an important part in the organization 

■ of the Liberal Republican party. Conservatives 
of both parties distrusted him as a man with a dan- 
gerous propensity to advocate "isms," a theoreti- 
cal politician more objectionable than the practical 
man of machine poUtics, and far more likely to dis- 
turb the existing state of aflfairs and to overturn the 
business of the country in his efforts at reform. As 
the Nation exp^ressed it, "Greeley appears to be 
* boiled crow * to more of his fellow citizens than any 
other candidate for office in this or any other age of 
which we have record." 

The regular Republican convention renominated 

^ Grant, and the Democrats, as the only chance of 
victory, swallowed the candidate and the platform 
of the Liberals. Doubtless Greeley's opposition to 



THE RISING SPIRIT OP UNREST 17 

the radical reconstruction measures and the fact 
that he had signed Jefferson Davis's bail-bond 
made the "crow** more palatable to the Southern 
Democrats. In the campaign Greeley's brilhant 
speeches were listened to with great respect. His 
tour was a personal triumph; but the very voters 
who hung eagerly on his speeches felt him to be too 
impulsive and opinionated to be trusted with presi- 
dential powers. They knew the worst which might 
be expected of Grant; they could not guess the ruin 
which Greeley's dynamic powers might bring on 
the country if he used them unwisely. In the end 
many of the original leaders of the Liberal move- 
ment supported Grant as the lesser of two evils. 
The Liberal defection from the Repubhcan ranks 
was more than offset by the refusal of Democrats 
to vote for Greeley, and Grant was triumphantly ^ ' 
reelected. 

The Liberal Republican party was undoubtedly 
weakened by the unfortunate selection of its can- 
didate, but it scarcely could have been victorious 
with another candidate. The movement was dis- 
tinctly one of leaders rather than of the masses, and 
the things for which it stood most specifically — 
the removal of political disabihties in the South and — * 
civil service reform — awakened little enthusiasm 



/ 



18 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

among the farmers of the West. These farmers on 
the other hand were beginning to be very much in- 
terested in a number of economic reforms which 
would vitally aflfect their welfare, such as the reduc- 
tion and readjustment of the burden of taxation, 
the control of corporations in the interests of the 
people, the reduction and regulation of the cost 
of transporation, and an increase in the currency 
supply. Some of these propositions occasionally 
received recognition in Liberal speeches and plat- 
forms, but several of them were anathema to many 
of the Eastern leaders of that movement. Had 
these leaders been gifted with vision broad enough 
to enable them to appreciate the vital economic and 
social problems of the West, the Liberal Republi- 
can movement might perhaps have caught the 
groimd swell of agrarian discontent, and the out- 
come might then have been the formation of an en- 
during national party of liberal tendencies broader 
and more progressive than the Liberal Republican 
party yet less likely to be swept into the vagaries 
of extreme radicalism than were the Anti-Mo- 
nopoly and Greenback parties of after years. A 
number of western Liberals such as A. Scott Sloan 
in Wisconsin and Ignatius Donnelly in Minnesota 
championed the farmers' cause, it is true, and in 



THE RISING SPmiT OP UNREST 19 

some States there was a fusion of party organiza- 
tions ; but men like Schurz and Trumbull held aloof 
from these radical movements, while Easterners 
like Godkin of the Nation met them with ridicule 
and invective. 

The period from 1870 to 1873 has been character- "^ 
ized as one of rampant prosperity, and such it was ( 
for the commercial, the manufacturing, and especi- / 
ally the speculative interests of the country. For | 
the farmers, however, it was a period of bitter de-/— 
pression. The years immediately following the 
close of the Civil War had seen a tremendous ex- 
pansion of production, particularly of the staple 
crops. The demobilization of the armies, the clos- ^ 
ing of war industries, increased immigration, the 
homestead law, the introduction of improved 
machinery, and the rapid advance of the railroads 
had all combined to drive the agricultural frontier 
westward by leaps and bounds until it had almost 
reached the limit of successful cultivation under 
conditions which then prevailed. As crop acreage 
and production increased, prices went down in ac- 
cordance with the law of supply and demand, and 
farmers all over the country found it diflScult to 
make a living. 

In the West and South — the great agricultural 



20 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

^ districts of the country — the farmers commonly 
jj bought their supplies and implements on credit or - 
^ mortgaged their crops in advance; and their profits 
at best were so slight that one bad season might put 
them thereafter entirely in the power of their credi- 
tors and force them to sell their crops on their credi- 
tors' terms. Many farms were heavily mortgaged, " 
too, at rates of interest that ate up the farmers* 
profits. During and after the Civil War the fluc- 
tuation of the currency and the high tariflf worked 
especial hardship on the farmers as producers of 
staples which must be sold abroad in competition 
with European products and as consumers of manu- 
factured articles which must be bought at home 
at prices made arbitrarily high by the protective 
tariff. In earlier times, farmers thus harassed 
would have struck their tents and moved farther 
west, taking up desirable land on the frontier and 
starting out in a fresh field of opportimity. It was 
/still possible for farmers to go west, and many did 
so but only to find that the opportunity for eco- 
nomic independence on the edge of settlement had 
largely disappeared. The era of the self-suflBcing 
pioneer was drawing to a clos^and the farmer 
on the frontier, forced by natural conditions over 
which he had no control to engage in the production 



THE RISING SPIRIT OP UNREST 21 

of staples, was fully as dependent on the market and '^ 
on transportation facilities as was his competitor in 
the East. 

In the fall of 1873 came the greatest panic in the ^ 
history of the nation, and a period of financial de- 
pression began which lasted throughout the decade, 
restricting industry, commerce, and even immigra- 
tion. On the farmers the blow fell with special^, 
severity. At the very time when they foimd it 
most difficult to realize profit on their sales of prod- 
uce, creditors who had hitherto carried their debts 
from year to year became insistent for payment. 
When mortgages fell due, it was well-nigh im- 
possible to renew them; and many a farmer saw 
years of labor go for nothing in a heart-breaking 
foreclosure sale. It was difficult to get even short- » 
term loans, running from seed-time to harvest. 
This important function of lending money to pay 
for labor and thus secure a larger crop, which has 
only recently been assumed by the Government in 
its establishment of farm loan banks, had been per- 
formed by private capitalists who asked usurious 
rates of interest. The farmers' protests against 
these rates had been loud; and now, when they 
found themselves unable to get loans at any rate 
whatever, their complaints naturally increased. 



£2 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Looking around for one cause to which to attribute 
all their misfortunes, they pitched upon the corpo- 
rations or monopolies, as they chose to call them, 
and especially upon the railroads. 

At first the farmers had looked upon the coming 
of the railroads as an unmixed blessing. The rail- 
road had meant the opening up of new territory, 
the establishment of channels of transportation 
by which they could send their crops to market. 
Without the railroad, the farmer who did not live 
near a navigable stream must remain a backwoods- 
man; he must make his own farm or his immediate 
community a self-suflBcing unit; he must get from 
his own land bread and meat and clothing for his 
family; he must be stock-raiser, grain-grower, far- 
rier, tinker, soap-maker, tanner, chandler — Jack- 
of-all-trades and master of none. With the rail- 
road he gained access to markets and the opportu- 
nity to specialize in one kind of farming; he coidd 
now sell his produce and buy in exchange many of 
the articles he had previously made for himself at 
the expense of much time and labor. Many farm- 
ers and farming communities bought railroad bonds 
in the endeavor to increase transportation facili- 
ties ; all were heartily in sympathy with the policy 
of the Government in granting to corporations land 



THE RISING SPIRIT OF UNREST 23 

along the route of the railways which they were 
to construct. 

By 1873, however, the Government had actually 
given to the railroads about thirty-five million 
acres, and was pledged to give to the Pacific roads 
alone about one hundred and forty-five million 
acres more. Land was now not so plentiful as it 
had been in 1850, when this policy had been in- 
augurated, and the farmers were naturally aggrieved 
that the railroads should own so much desirable 
land and should either hold it for speculative pur- 
poses or demand for it prices much higher than the 
Government had asked for land adjacent to it 
and no less valuable. Moreover, when railroads 
were merged and reorganized or passed into the 
hands of receivers the shares held by farmers were 
frequently wiped out or were greatly decreased in 
value. Often failroad stock had been "watered" 
to such an extent that high freight charges were 
necessary in order to permit the payment of divi- j 
dends. Thus the farmer might find himself with-^ 
out his railroad stock, with a mortgage on his land 
which he had incurred in order to buy the stbck, 
with an increased burden of taxation because 
his township had also been gullible enough to 
buy stock, and with a railroad whose excessive 



24 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

rates allowed him but a narrow margin of profit 
on his produce. 

When the farmers sought political remedies for 

- their economic ills, they discovered that, as a class, 

they had little representation or influence either in 

Congress or in the state legislatures. Before the 

>' Civil War the Southern planter had represented 

\ agricultural interests in Congress fairly well; after 

^e War the dominance of Northern interests left 

the Western farmer without his traditional ally 

in the South. Political power was concentrated in 

' the East and in the urban sections of the West. 

Members of Congress were increasingly hkely to be 

from the manufacturing classes or from the legal 

profession, which sympathized with these classes 

rather than with the agriculturists. Only about 

seven per cent of the members of Congress were 

farmers; yet in 1870 forty-seven per cent of the 

population was engaged in agriculture. The only 

remedy for the farmers was to organize themselves 

as a class in order to promote their common welfare. 



r 



CHAPTER m 

THE GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 

With these real or fancied grievances crying for re^^ 
dress, the farmers soon turned to the Grange as the y^^' 
weapon ready at hand t© cembat the forces which ^ 
they believed were conspiring to crush them. In^ 
1872 b^an the real spi^ead of the order. Where 
the Grange had previously reckoned in terms of 
hundreds of new lodges, it now began to speak 
of thousands. State Granges were established in ' 
States where the year before the organization had 
obtained but a precarious foothold; pioneer local 
Granges invaded regions which hitherto had been 
impenetrable. Although the only 'States which 
were thoroughly organized were Iowa, Minnesota, 
South Carolina, and Mississippi, the rapid spread 
of the order into other States and its intensive 
growth in regions so far apart gave promise of its 
ultimate development into a national movement. 
This development was, to be sure, not without 

25 



26 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

opposition. When the Grangers began to speak of 
their function in terms of business and political co- 
operation, the forces against which they were unit- 
ing took alarm. The commission men and local 
merchants of the South were especially apprehen-^ 
sive and, it is said, sometimes foreclosed the mort- 
gages of planters who were so independent as to join 
the order. But here, as elsewhere, persecution de- 
feated its own end; the opposition of their enemies 
convinced the farmers of the merits of the Grange. 

/ In the East, several circumstances retarded the 
movement. In the first pl ace, the Eastern farmer 
had for some time felt the Western farmer to be his 
serious rival. The Westerner had larger acreage 
and larger yields from his virgin soil than the 
Easterner from his smaller tracts of well-nigh ex- 
hausted land. What crops the latter did produce 
he must sell in competition with the Western crops, 
and he was not eager to lower freight charges for 
his competitor. A second deterrent to the growth 

^^^ of the order in the East was the organization of two 
Granges among the commission men and the grain 
dealers of Boston and New York, under the segis of 
that clause of the constitutioxi which declared any 
person interested in agriculture to be eligible to 
membership in the order. Though the storm of 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 27 

protest which arose all over the country against 
this betrayal to the enemy resulted in the revok- 
ing of the charters for these Granges, the Eastern 
farmer did not soon forget the incident. 

The year 1873 is important in the annals of the y 
Grange because it marks the retirement of the -^ 
" founders " from power. In January of that year, 
at the sixth session of the National Grange, the 
temporary organization of government clerks was 
replaced by a permanent corporation, officered by 
farmers. Kelley was reelected Secretary; Dudley 
W. Adams of Iowa was made Master; and William 
Saimders, erstwhile Master of the National Grange, 
D. Wyatt Aiken of South Carolina, and E. R. Shank- 
land of Iowa were elected to the executive commit- 
tee. The substitution of alert and eager workers, y^ 
already experienced, in organizing Granges, for the / 
dead wood of the Washington bureaucrats gave the 
order a fresh impetus to growth. From the spring 
of 1873 to the following spring the number of 
granges more than quadrupled, and the increase 
again centered mainly in the Middle West. 

By the end of 1873 the Grange had penetrated 
ail but four States — Connecticut, Rhode Island,'^ r^ 
Delaware, and Nevada — and there were thirty- 
two state Granges in existence. The movement 



28 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

was now well defined and national in scope, so that 
the seventh annual session of the National Grange, 
which took place in St. Louis in February, 1874, at- 
tracted much interest and comment. Thirty-three 
men and twelve women attended the meetings, rep- 
resenting thirty-two state and territorial Granges 
and about half a million members. Their most 
^LL^nportant act was the adoption of the "Declara- 
"^ tion of Purposes of the National Grange," sub- 
scribed to then and now as the platform of the 
Patrons and copied with minor modifications by 
many later agricultural organizations in the United 
^tates J^ The general piupose of the Patrons was 
"to labor for the good of our Order, our Country, 
land Mankind." This altruistic ideal was to find 
ipractical application in efforts to enhance the com- 
/ fort and attractions of homes, to maintain the laws, 
to advance agricultural and industrial education, 
- to diversify crops, to systematize farm work, to 
J establish cooperative buying and selling, to suppress 
\ personal, local, sectional, and national prejudices, 
and to discountenance "the credit system, the 
/ fashion system, and every other system tending to 
prodigality and bankruptcy." As to business, the 
Patrons declared themselves enemies not of capital 
but of the tyranny of monopolies, not of railroads 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 29 ^ 

but of their high freight tariffs and monopoly 
of transportation. In poKtics, too, they main- \ / 
tained a rather nice balance: the Grange was not^\ 
to be a political or party organization, but its 
members were to perform their political duties as 
individual citizens. 

It could hardly be expected that the program . 
of the Grange would satisfy all farmers. For the 
agricidtural discontent, as for any other dissatis- 
faction, numerous panaceas were proposed, the ad- 
vocates of each of which scorned all the others and 
insisted on their particular remedy. Some farmers 
objected to the Grange because it was a secret'T 
organization; others, because it was nonpartisan. 
For some the organization was too conservative; 
for others, too radical. Yet all these objectors felt , 
the need of some sort of organization amorfg the 
farmers, very much as the trade-unionist and the 
socialist, though widely divergent in program, 
agree that the workers must unite in order to better ' . 
their condition. Hence during these years of activ- 
ity on the part of the Grange many other agricul- 
tural societies were formed, differing from the 
Patrons of Husbandry in specific program rather 
than in general purpose. 

The most important of these societies were the v 



so THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

-^farmers' clubs, at first more or less independent of 
j each other but later banded together in state asso- 
^ciations. The most striking differences of these 
jplubs from the Granges were their lack of secrecy 
and their avowed political purposes. Their estab- 
lishment marks the definite entrance of the farmers 

^as a class into politics. During the years 1872 to 
1875 the independent farmers* organizations multi- 
plied much as the Granges did and for the same 
reasons. The Middle West again was the scene 
of their greatest power. In Illinois this movement 
began even before the Grange appeared in the 
State, and its growth during the early seventies 
paralleled that of the secret order. In other States 
also, notably in E^ansas, there sprang up at this 
time agricultural clubs of political complexion, and 
where they existed in considerable numbers they 
generally took the lead in the political activities of 
the farmers' movement. Where the Grange had 

^ the field practically to itself, as in Iowa and Minne- 
sota, the restriction in the constitution of the order 
,as to political or partisan activity was evaded by 
the simple expedient of holding meetings "outside 
the gate, " at which platforms were adopted, can- 
didates nominated, and plans made for county, 
district, and state conventions. 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 31 

In some cases the fanners hoped, by a show of 
strength, to achieve the desired results through one 
or both of the old parties, but they soon decided ^ 
that they could enter politics eflfectively only by^f?* 
way of a third party. The professional politicians 
were not inclined to espouse new and radical issues 
which might lead to the disruption of party lines. 
The outcome, therefore, was the establishment of 
^ new parties in eleven of the Western States during 
1873 and 1874. Known variously as Independent, \ \ 
Reform, Anti-Monopoly, or Farmers* parties, these 
organizations were all parts of the same general 
movement, and their platforms were quite similar. 
The paramount demands were : first, the subjectioi^. 
of corporations, and especially of railroad corpora- 
tions, to the control of the State; and second, re- \ 
form and economy in government. After the new \ 
parties were well under way, the Democrats in 
most of the States, being in a hopeless minority, - 
made common cause with them in the hope of thus 
compassing the defeat of their hereditary rivals, the 
old-line Republicans. In Missouri, however, where 
the Demo«:§,cy had been restored to power by 
the Liberal-Republican movement, the new party 
received the support of the Republicans. 

Illinois, where the farmers were first thoroughly 



32 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

organized into clubs and Granges, was naturally the 
first State in which they took eflfective pohtical ac- 
tion. The agitation for railroad regulation, which 
began in Illinois in the sixties, had caused the new 
state constitution of 1870 to include mandatory 
provisions directing the legislature to pass laws to 
prevent extortion and unjust discrimination in rail- 
way charges. One of the acts passed by the Legis- 
-lature of 1871 in an attempt to carry out these in- 
structions was declared imconstitutional by the 
state supreme court in January, 1873, This was 
the spark to the tinder. In the following April the 
farmers flocked to a convention at the state capital 
and so impressed the legislators that they passed 
more stringent and effective laws for the regulation 
of railroads. But the politicians had a still greater 
surprise in store for them. In the elections of 
judges in Jime, the farmers retired from office the 
judge who had declared their railroad law imcon- 
stitutional and elected their own candidates for the 
two vacancies in the supreme court and for many 
of the vacancies in the circuit courts. 
^ Now began a vigorous campaign for the election 
of farmers' candidates in the coimty elections in the 
fall. So many political meetings were held on In- 
dependence Day in 1878 that it was referred to as 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 33 

the "Farmers' Fourth of July." This had always > 
been the greatest day of the farmer's year, for it 
meant opportunity for social and intellectual en- 
joyment in the picnics and celebrations which 
brought neighbors together in hilarious good-fel- 
lowship. In 1873, however, the gatherings took 
on unwonted seriousness. The accustomed spread- 
eagle oratory gave place to impassioned denuncia- 
tion of corporations and to the solemn reading of a 
Farmers' Declaration of Independence. "When, in 
the course of human events," this document begins 
in words famiUar to every schoolboy orator, "it 
becomes necessary for a class of the people, suffer- 
ing from long continued systems of oppression and 
abuse, to rouse themselves from an apathetic in- 
difference to their own interests, which has become 
habitual ... a decent respect for the opinions of 
mankind requires that they should declare the 
causes that impel them to a course so necessary to 
their own protection." Then comes a statement 
of " self-evident truths, " a catalogue of the sins of 
the railroads, a denunciation of railroads and Con- 
gress for not having redressed these wrongs, and 
finally the conclusion: 

We, therefore, the producers of the state in our 
several counties assembled ... do solemnly declare 



34 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

that we will use all lawful and peaceable means to free 
ourselves from the tyranny of monopoly, and that we 
will never cease our eflPorts for reform until every de- 
partment of our Government gives token that the 
reign of licentious extravagance is over> and something 
of the purity, honesty, and frugality with which our 
fathers inaugurated it, has taken its place. 

That to this end we hereby declare ourselves abso- 
lutely free and independent of all past political connec- 
tions, and that we will give our suffrage only to such 
men for office, as we have good reason to believe will 
use their best endeavors to the promotion of these ends; 
and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reli- 
ance on divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each 
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 

This fall campaign of 1873 in Illinois broke up 
old party lines in remarkable fashion. In some 
counties the Republicans and in other counties the 
Democrats either openly joined the "Reformers'* 
or refrained from making separate nominations. 
Of the sixty-six counties which the new party con- 
tested, it was victorious in fifty-three. This first 
election resulted in the best showing which the Re- 
formers made in Illinois. In state elections, the 
new party was less successful; the farmers who 
voted for their neighbors running on an Anti- 
Monopoly ticket for lesser ofiSces hesitated to vote 
for strangers for state ofiSce. 



/ 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 35 

Other Middle Western States at this time also 
felt the uneasy stirring of radical political thought 
and saw the birth of third parties, short-lived, most 
of them, but throughout their brief existence cry- 
ing loudly and persistently for reforms of all de- 
scription. The tariff, the civil service system, and^^ 
the currency, all came in for their share of criticism- i 
and of suggestions for revision, but the dominant^ . 
Cjiote was a strident demand for railroad regulationy^ ^ 
Heirs of the Liberal Repubhcans and precursors of 1/ 
the Greenbackers and Popuhsts, thesemdependent 
parties were as voices crying in the wildemesCpre- 
paring the way for national parties of reform> The 
notable achievement of the independent parties in 
the domain of legislation was the enactment of n^ 
laws to regulate railroads in five States of the upper 
Mississippi Valley. ^ When these laws were passed, 
the parties had done their work. By 1876 they 
had disappeared or, in a few instances, had merged \ 
with the Greenbackers. Their temporary suc- 
cesses had demonstrated, however, to both farmers 
and professional politicians that if once solidarity 
could be obtained among the agricultural class, that 
class would become the controlling element in the 
politics of the Middle Western States. It is not 

' See Chapter IV. 



S6 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

surprising, therefore, that wave after wave of re- 
form swept over the West in the succeeding decades. 

The independent parties of the middle seventies 
were distinctly spontaneous uprisings of the people 
and especially of the farmers, rather than move- 
ments instigated by politicians for personal ends or 
by professional reformers. This circumstance was 
a source both of strength and weakness. As the ' 
movements began to develop imexpected power, 
politicians often attempted to take control but, 
where they succeeded, the movement was checked 
by the farmers' distrust of these self-appointed 
leaders. On the other hand, the new parties suf- 
fered from the lack of skillful and experienced 
leaders. The men who managed their campaigns 
and headed their tickets were usually well-to-do 
farmers drafted from the ranks, with no more po- 
litical experience than perhaps a term or two in 
the state legislature. Such were Willard C. Flagg, 
president of the Illinois State Farmers' Associa- 
tion, Jacob G. Vale, candidate for governor in Iowa, 
and William R. Taylor, the Granger governor of 
Wisconsin. 

Taylor is typical of the picturesque and force- 
ful figures which frontier life so often developed. 
He was bom in 0>nnecticut, of parents recently 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE 37 

emigrated from Scotland. Three weeks after his 
birth his mother died, and six years later his father, 
a sea captain, was drowned. The orphan boy, 
brought up by strangers in JeflFerson County, New 
York, experienced the hardships of frontier life and 
developed that passion for knowledge which so fre- 
quently is found in those to whom education is 
denied. When he was sixteen, he had enough of 
the rudiments to take charge of a country school, 
and by teaching in the winter and working in the 
summer he earned enough to enter Union College. 
He was unable to complete the course, however, 
and turned to teaching in Ohio, where he restored 
to decent order a school notorious for bullying 
its luckless teachers. But teaching was not to be 
his career; indeed, Taylor's versatility for a time 
threatened to make him the proverbial Jack-of -all- 
trades : he was employed successively in a grist mill, 
a saw mill, and an iron foundry; he dabbled in the 
study of medicine; and finally, in the year which 
saw Wisconsin admitted to the Union, he bought a 
farm in that State. Ownership of property steadied 
his interests and at the same time afforded an ade- 
quate outlet for his energies. He soon made his 
farm a model for the neighborhood and managed it 
so efficiently that he had time to interest himself 



38 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

in fanners' organizations and to hold positions of 
trust in his township and county. 

By 187S Taylor had acquired considerable local 
political experience and had even held a seat in the 
state senate. As president of the State Agricultural 
Society, he was quite naturally chosen to head the 
ticket of the new Liberal Reform party. The brew- 
ing interests of the State, angered at a drastic tem- 
perance law enacted by the preceding legislature, 
swimg their support to Taylor. Thus reinforced, he 
won the election. As governor he made vigorous 
and tireless attempts to enforce the Granger rail- 
road laws, and on one occasion he scandalized the 
conventional citizens of the State by celebrating 
a favorable court decision in one of the Granger 
cases with a salvo of artillery from the capitol. 
^ Yet in spite of this prominence, Taylor, after his 
defeat for reflection in 1875, retired to his farm and 
to obscurity. His vivid personality was not again 
«^ to assert itself in public affairs. It is difficult to 
jr^ accoimt for the fact that so few of the leaders dur- 
\ ^ing the Granger period played prominent parts in 
/\TSter phases of the agrarian crusade. The rank 
and file of the successive parties must have been 
much the same, but each wave of the movement 
fmfs^ new leaders to the surface. 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TIDE S» 

The one outstanding exception among the leaders 
of the Anti-Monopolists was Ignatius Donnelly of 
Minnesota — "the sage of Nininger" — who re- 
mained a captain of the radical cohorts in every 
agrarian movement until his death in 1 901 . A red- 
headed aggressive Irishman, with a magnetic per- 
sonality and a remarkable intellect, Donnelly went 
to Minnesota from Pennsylvania in 1856 and spec- 
ulated in town sites on a large scale. When he was 
left stranded by the panic of 1857, acting upon his 
own principle that "to hide one's light under a 
bushel is to extinguish it, " he entered the political 
arena. In Pennsylvania Donnelly had been a 
Democrat, but his genuine sympathy for the op- 
pressed made him an opponent of slavery and con- 
sequently a Republican. In 1857 and 1858 he ran 
for the state senate in Minnesota on the Republi- 
can ticket in a hopelessly Democratic county. In 
1859 he was nominated for Keutenant governor on 
the ticket headed by Alexander Ramsey; and his 
caustic wit, his keenness in debate, and his elo- 
quence made him a valuable asset in the battle- 
royal between Republicans and Democrats for the 
possession of Minnesota. As lieutenant governor, 
Donnelly early showed his sympathy with the 
farmers by championing laws which lowered the 



40 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

leg^l rate of interest and which made more humane 
the process of foreclosure on mortgages. The out- 
break of the Civil War gave him an opportunity to 
demonstrate his executive ability as acting gover- 
nor during Ramsey's frequent trips to Washington. 
In this capacity he issued the first proclamation for 
the raising of Minnesota troops in response to the 
call of President Lincoln. Elected to Congress in 
1862, he served three terms and usually supported 
progressive legislation. 

Donnelly's growing popularity and his ambition 
for promotion to the Senate soon became a mat- 
ter of alarm to the friends of Senator Ramsey, 
who controlled the Republican party in the State. 
They determined to prevent Donnelly's renomi- 
nation in 1868 and selected William D. Washbium 
of Minneapolis to make the race against him. In 
the spring of this year Donnelly engaged in a con- 
troversy with Representative E. B. Washburn of 
Illinois, a brother of W. D. Washburn, in the 
course of which the Illinois congressman published 
a letter in a St. Paul paper attacking Donnelly's 
personal character. Believing this to be part of the 
campaign against him, the choleric Minnesotan re- 
plied in the house with a remarkable rhetorical 
display which greatly entertained the members but 



GRANGER MOVEMENT AT FLOOD TTOE 41 

did not increase their respect for him. His oppo- 
nents at home made eflfective use of this affair, and 
the outcome of the contest was a divided conven- 
tion, the nomination of two Republicans, each 
claiming to be the regular candidate of the party, 
and the ultimate election of a Democrat. 

Donnelly was soon ready to break with the old 
guard of the Republican party in national as well 
as in state pohtics. In 1870 he ran for Congress as 
an independent Republican on a low tariff plat- 
form but was defeated in spite of the fact that he 
received the endorsement of the Democratic con- 
vention. Two years later he joined the Liberal . 
Republicans in supporting Greeley against Grant. 
When the farmers* Granges began to spring up like 
mushrooms in 1873, Donnelly was quick to see the 
poUtical possibilities of the movement. He con- 
ducted an e3ctensive correspondence with farm- 
ers, editors, and politicians of radical tendencies 
all over the State and played a leading part in the 
organization of the Anti-Monopoly party. He was 
elected to the state senate in 1873, and in the fol- 
lowing year he started a newspaper, the Anti- 
Monopolist, to serve as the organ of the movement. 

Although Donnelly was technically still a f armer» 
he was quite content to leave the management of his 



) 



42 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

farm to his capable wife, while he made politics his 
profession, with Uterature and lecturing as avoca- 
tions. His frequent and brilliant lectures no less 
than his voluminous writings'^ attest his amazing 
industry. Democrat, Republican, Liberal-Repub- 
Ucan, and Anti-Monopolist; speculator, lawyer, 
farmer, lecturer, stump-speaker, editor, and author; 
preacher of morals and practicer of shrewd poUtical 
evasions; and always a radical — he was for many 
years a force to be reckoned with in the poUtics of 
his State and of the nation. 

' The Cheat Cryptogram, for instance, devotes a thousand pages to 
proving a Bacon cipher in the phiys of Shakespeare! 



; 



CHAPTER IV 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 



Though the society of the Patrons of Husbandry " . 
was avowedly non-poKtical in character, there is / 
ample justification for the use of the term " Grang- ^ 
er" in connection with the radical railroad legisla- \ 
tion enacted in the Northwestern States during the 
seventies. The fact that the Grange did not take 
direct political action is immaterial: certainly the 
order made political action on the part of the 
farmers possible by establishing among them a feel- 
ing of mutual confidence and trust whereby they 
could organize to work harmoniously for their com- 
mon cause. Before the advent of the Patrons of 
Husbandry the farmers were so isolated from each 
other that cooperation was impossible. It is hard 
for us to imagine, f amihar as we are with the rural 
free delivery of mail, with the coimtry telephone 
line, with the automobile, how completely the aver- 
age farmer of 1865 was cut off from communication 

4S 



44 THE AGRABIAN CRUSADE 

with the outside world. His dissociation from any 
but his nearest neighbors made him unsocial, nar- 
row-minded, bigoted, and suspicious. He believed 
that every man's hand was against him, and he was 
therefore often led to turn his hand against every 
man. Not until he was convinced that he might 
at least trust the Grangers did he lay aside his 
suspicions and join with other farmers in the at- 
tempt to obtain what they considered just railroad 
legislation. 

Certain it is, moreover, that the Grangers made 
use of the popular hostility to the railroads in secur- 
ing membership for the order. "Cooperation*' 
and "Down with Monopoly" were two of the slo- 
gans most commonly used by the Grange between 
1870 and 1875 and were in large part responsi- 
ble for its great expansion. Widely circulated re- 
prints of articles exposing graft and corruption 
made excellent fuel for the flames of agitation. 
J ^*~ How much of the farmers' bitterness against the 
railroads was justified it is difficult to determine. 
Some of it was imdoubtedly due to prejudice, to 
the hostility of the "producer" for the "nonpro- 
ducer," and to the suspicion which the Western 
farmer felt for the Eastern magnate. But much 
of the suspicion was not without foimdation. In 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 4ff 

some cases manipulation of railway stock had ab- 
solutely cheated farmers and agricultural towns 
and counties out of their investments. It is a well- 
known fact that the corporations were not averse ^j 
to creating among legislators a disposition to favor 
their interests. Passes were commonly given by 
the railroads to all public officials, from the local 
supervisors to the judges of the Supreme Court, 
and opportunities were oflFered to legislators to buy 
stock far below the market price. In such subtle 
ways the railroads insinuated themselves into favor 
among the makers and interpreters of law. Then, 
too, the farmers felt that the railway companies 
made rates unnecessarily high and frequently 
practised unfair discrimination against certain sec- 
tions and individuals. When the Iowa farmer was 
obliged to bum com for fuel, because at fifteen cents 
a bushel it was cheaper than coal, though at the 
same time it was selling for a dollar in the East, he 
feltTtlikit there was something wrong, and quite 
naturally accused the railroads of extortion. 

The fimdamental issue involved in Illinois, 
Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, where the battle 
was begun and fought to a fimsh, was whether or . 
not a State had power to regulate the tariffs of. 
railway companies incorporated under its laws. 



46 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Railway companies, many jurists argued, were pri- 
vate concerns transacting business according to the 
laws of the State and no more to be controlled in 
making rates than dry goods companies in fixing 
the price of spools of thread; rates, like the price of 
merchandise, were determined by the volume of 
trade and the amount of competition, and for a 
State to interfere with them was nothing less than 
tyranny. On the other hand, those who advocated 
regulation argued that railroads, though private 
corporations, were from the nature of their busi- 
ness pubhc servants and, as such, should be subject 
to state regulation and control. 

Some States, foreseeing difficulties which might 
arise later from the doctrine that a charter is a con- 
tract, as set forth by the United States Supreme 
Coiu't in the famous Dartmouth College case,' had 
quite early in their history attempted to safeguard 
their right to legislate concerning corporatiomu A 
clause had been inserted in the state cons^KHbn 
of Wisconsin which declared that all laws creating 
corporations might at any time be altered or re- 
pealed by the legislatures. The constitution of 
Minnesota asserted specifically that the railroads, 

' See John Marshall and the ConstUution, by Edward S. Corwin (in 
The Chronides of America), p. 154 ff. 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 47 

as common carriers enjoying right of way, were 
bound to carry freight on equal and reasonable 
terms. When the Legislature of Iowa turned over 
to the railroad companies lands granted by the 
Federal Government, it did so with the reservation 
that the companies should be subject to the rules 
and regulations of the General Assembly. Thus 
these States were fortified not only by arguments 
from general governmental theory but also by 
written articles, more or less specifically phrased, 
on which they relied to estabUsh their right to 
control the railroads. 

The first gun in this fight for railroad regulation 
was fired in Illinois. As early as 1869, after several 
years of agitation, the legislature passed an act de- 
claring that railroads should be limited to ""just, 
reasonable, and uniform rates, " but, as no provi- 
sion was made for determining what such rates 
were, the act was a mere encumbrance on the 
statute books. In the new state constitution of 
1870, however, the framers, influenced by a grow- 
ing demand on the part of the farmers which mani- 
fested itself in a Producers* Convention, inserted a 
section directing the legislature to ^^pass laws to 
correct abuses and to prevent unjust discrimina- 
tion and extortion in the rates of freight and 



48 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

passenger tariffs on the different railroads in this 
State." The legislature at its next session appears 
to have made an honest attempt to obey these in- 
structions. One act established maximum passen- 
ger fares varying from two and one-half to five and 
one-half cents a mile for the different classes into 
which the roads were divided. Another provided, 
in effect, that freight charges should be based en- 
tirely upon distance traversed and prohibited any 
increases over rates in 1870. This amounted to an 
attempt to force all rates to the level of the lowest 
competitive rates of that year. Finally, a third 
act established a board of railroad and warehouse 
commissioners charged with the enforcement of 
these and other laws and with the collection of 
information. 

The railroad companies, denying the right of the 
State to regulate their business, flatly refused to 
obey the laws; and the state supreme court de- 
clared the act regulating freight rates unconstitu- 
tional on the ground that it attempted to prevent 
not only unjust discrimination but any discrimi- 
nation at all. The legislature then passed the Act 
of 1873, which avoided the constitutional pitfall 
by providing that discriminatory rates should be 
considered as prima facie but not absolute evidence 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 49 

of unjust discrimination. The railroads were thus 
permitted to adduce evidence to show that the dis- 
crimination was justified, but the act expressly 
stated that the existence of competition at some 
points and its nonexistence at others should not be 
deemed a sufficient justification of discrimination. 
In order to prevent the roads from raising all rates 
to the level of the highest instead of lowering them 
to the level of the lowest, the commissioners were 
directed to establish a schedule of maximum rates; 
and the charging of rates higher than these by any 
company after January 15, 1874, was to be con- 

• 

sidered jyrima facie evidence of extortion. Other 
provisions increased the penalties for violations 
and strengthened the enforcing powers of the com- 
mission in other ways. This act was roundly de- 
nounced at the time, especially in the East, as an 
attempt at confiscation, and the railroad companies 
refused to obey it for several years; but ultimately 
it stood the test of the courts and became the per- 
manent basis of railroad regulation in Illinois and 
the model for the solution of this problem in many 
other States. 

The first Granger law of Minnesota, enacted in 
1871, established fixed schedules for both passen- 
gers and freight, while another act of the same year 



50 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

provided for a railroad commissioner. In this 
instance also the companies denied the vaUdity of 
the law, and when the state supreme court upheld it 
in 1873, they appealed to the Supreme Court of the 
United States. In the meantime there was no 
way of enforcing the law, and the antagonism to- 
ward the roads fostered by the Grange and the 
Anti-Monopoly party became more and more in- 
tense. In 1874 the legislature replaced the Act of 
1871 with one modeled on the Illinois law of 1873; 
but it soon discovered that no workable set of uni- 
form rates could be made for the State because of 
the wide variation of conditions in the diflPerent 
sections. Rates and fares which would be just to 
the companies in the frontier regions of the State 
would be extortionate in the thickly populated 
areas. This difficulty could have been avoided by 
giving the commission power to establish varying 
schedules for diflFerent sections of the same road; 
but the anti-railroad sentiment was beginning to 
die down, and the Legislature of 1875, instead of 
trying to improve the law, abandoned the attempt 
at state regulation. 

The Granger laws of Iowa and Wisconsin, both 
enacted in 1874, attempted to estabUsh maxi- 
mum rates by direct legislative action, although 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 51 

commissions were also created to collect informa- 
tion and assist in enforcing the laws. The Iowa law 
was very carefully drawn and appears to have been 
observed, in form at least, by most of the com- 
panies while it remained in force. In 1878, how- 
ever, a systematic campaign on the part of the rail- 
road forces resulted in the repeal of the act. In 
Wisconsin, a majority of the members of the Senate 
favored the railroads and, fearing to show their 
hands, attempted to defeat the proposed legisla- 
tion by substituting the extremely radical Potter 
Bill for the moderate measure adopted by the 
Assembly. The senators found themselves hoist 
with their own petard, however, for the lower 
house, made up largely of Grangers, accepted this 
bill rather than let the matter of railroad legisla- 
tion go by default. The rates fixed by the Potter 
Law for many commodities were certainly un- 
reasonably low, although the assertion of a rail- 
road official that the enforcement of the law would 
cut oflF twenty-five per cent of th^ gross earnings of 
the companies was a decided exaggeration. Rely- 
ing upon the advice of such eminent Eastern lawyers 
as William M. Evarts, Charles O'Conor, E. Rock- 
wood Hoar, and Benjamin R. Curtis that the law 
was invalid, the roads refused to obey it until it was 



52 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

upheld by the state supreme court late in 1874. 
They then began a campaign for its repeal. Though 
they obtained only some modification in 1875, they 

/ucceeded completely in 1876. 
^ The contest between the railroads and the f arm- 
^ , ers was intense while it lasted. The farmers had 
X votes; the railroads had money; and the legislators 

Cwere sometimes between the devil and the deep sea 
in the fear of oflFending one side or the other. The 
farmers* methods of campaign were simple. Often 
questionnaires were distributed to all candidates for 
office, and only those who went on record as favor- 
ing railroad restriction were endorsed by the farm- 
ers* clubs and committees. An agricultural con- 
vention, sometimes even a meeting of the state 
Grange, would be held at the capital of the State 
while the legislature was in session, and it was a 
bold legislator who, in the presence of his farmer 
constituents, would vote against the measures they 
approved. When the railroads in Illinois refused 
to lower their passenger rates to conform to the law, 
adventurous farmers of ten attempted to "ride for 
legal fares,** giving the trainmen the alternative 
of accepting the low fares or throwing the hardy 
passengers from the train. 
The methods of the railroads in dealing with the 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 53 

legislators were more subtle. Whether or not the 
numerous charges of bribery were true, railroad 
favors were imdoubtedly distributed among well 
disposed legislators. In Iowa passes were not given 
to the senators who voted against the railroads, and 
those sent to the men who voted in the railroads' 
interest were accompanied by notes annoimcing 
that free passes were no longer to be given gener- 
ally but only to the friends of the railroads. At 
the session of the Iowa Legislature in 1873, fom* 
lawyers who posed as farmers and Grange members 
were well known as lobbyists for the railroads. The 
senate paid its respects to these men at the close of 
its session by adopting the folio wing resolution : 

Whereas, There have been constantly in attendance 
on the Senate and House of this General Assembly, 
from the commencement of the session to the present 
time, four gentlemen professing to represent the great 
agricultural interest of the State of Iowa, known as the 
Grange; and — 

Whereas, These gentlemen appear entirely destitute 
of any visible means of support; therefore be it — 

Resolved, By the Senate, the House concurring, 
that the janitors permit aforesaid gentlemen to gather 
up all the waste paper, old newspapers, &c., from under 
the desks of the members, and they be allowed one 
postage stamp each. The American Agriculturisty What 
Greeley Knows about Farming, and that they be per- 



54 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

mitted to take with them to their homes, if they have 
any, all the rejected railroad tariff bills, Beardsley's 
speech on female suffrage, Claussen's reply, Kasson's 
speech on barnacles, Blakeley's dog bill, Teale's liquor 
bill, and be given a pass over the Des Moines Valley 
Railroad, with the earnest hope that they will never 
return to Des Moines. 

rOnce the Granger laws were enacted, the rail- 
^ ^ roads either fought the laws in court or obeyed 

J them in such a way as to make them appear most 
] obnoxious to the people, or else they employed both 

(^tactics. The lawsuits, which began as soon as the 
laws had been passed, dragged on, in appeal after 
appeal, until finally they were settled in the Su- 
preme Court of the United States. These suits 
I were not so numerous as might be expected, because 

,J^ most of the States they had to be brought on the 
initiative of the injured shipper, and many shippers 
feared to incur the animosity of the railroad. A 
farmer was afraid that, if he angered the railroad, 

, misfortunes would befaU him: his grain might be 
delivered to the wrong elevators or left to stand and 
spoil in damp freight cars; there might be no cal*s 
available for grain just when his shipment was 
ready; and machinery destined for him might be 
delayed at a time when lack of it would mean the 
loss of his crops. The railroads for their part 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 55 

whenever they found an opportunity to make the 
new laws appear obnoxious in the eyes of the people, 
were not slow to seize it. That section of the Illi- 
nois law of 1873 which prohibited unjust discrimi- 
nation went into effect in July, but the maximum 
freight rates were not fixed until January of 1874. 
As a result of this situation, the railroads in July 
made all their freight rates imiform, according to 
the law, but accomplished this imiformity by rais- 
ing the low rates instead of lowering the high. In 
Minnesota, similarly, the St. Paul and Pacific road, 
in its zeal to estabUsh uniform passenger rates, 
raised the fare between St. Paul and Minneapolis 
from three to five cents a mile, in order to make it 
conform to the rates elsewhere in the State. The 
St. Paul and Sioux City road declared that the 
Granger law made its operation unprofitable, and 
it so reduced its train service that the people peti- 
tioned the commission to restore the former rate. 
In Wisconsin, when the state supreme court af- 
firmed the constitutionality of the radical Potter 
law, the railroads retaliated in some cases by carry- 
ing out their threat to give the public "Potter cars. 
Potter rails, and Potter time." As a result the 
pubUc soon demanded the repeal of the law. 
In all the States but Illinois the Granger laws were 



56 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

I.- repealed before they had been given a fair trial. 
The commissions remained in existence, however, 
although with merely advisory functions; and they 
sometimes did good service in the arbitration of dis- 
putes between shippers and railroads. Interest in 
the railroad problem died down for the time, but 
every one of the Granger States subsequently enact- 
ed for the regulation of railroad rates statutes which, 
although more scientific than the laws of the seven- 
ties, are the same in principle. The Granger laws 
thus paved the way not only for future and more en- 
during legislation in these States but also for similar 
legislation in most of the other States of the Union 
and even for the national regulation of railroads 
through the Interstate Commerce Commission. 

The Supreme Court of the United States was the 
theater for the final stage of this conflict between 

\^ the railroads and the farmers. In October, 1876, 
decisions were handed down together in eight cases 
which had been appealed from federal circuit and 
state courts in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Min- 
nesota, and which involved the validity of the 
Granger laws. The fundamental issue was the 
same in all these cases — the right of a State to 

V regulate a business that is public in natiu^e though 
. privately owned and managed. 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 57 

The first of the "Granger cases," as they were 
termed by Justice Field in a dissenting opinion, was 
not a raih*oad case primarily but grew out of ware- 
house legislation* which the farmers of Illinois se- 
cured in 1871. This act established maximum > 
charges for grain storage and required all ware- 
housemen to pubUsh their rates for each year dic- 
ing the first week in January and to refrain from 
increasing these rates during the year and from dis- 
criminating between customers. In an endeavor 
to enforce this law the railroad and warehouse 
commission brought suit against Munn and Scott, a(^^ q^ 
warehouse firm in Chicago, for failure to take out , . ^ 
the license required by the act. The suit, known * ' ' 
as Munn vs. Illinois, finally came to the United i 
States Supreme Court and was decided in favor of 
the State, two of the justices dissenting.^ The 
opinion of the court in this case, delivered by Chief 
Justice Waite, laid down the principles which were 
followed in the railroad cases. The attorneys for 
the warehousemen had argued that the act in ques- 
tion, by assuming to limit charges, amoimted to a 
deprivation of property without due process of law 
and was thus repugnant to the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States. 

1 94 United StaUs Reports, 113. 



58 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

But the court declared that it had long been cus- 
tomary both in England and America to regulate 
by law any business in which the pubUc has an in- 
terest, such as ferries, common carriers, bakers, or 
millers, and that the warehouse business in ques- 
tion was undoubtedly clothed with such a public 
interest. Further, it was asserted that this right 
to regulate implied the right to fix maximum 
charges, and that what those charges should be was 
a legislative and not a judicial question. 

In deciding the railroad cases the courts applied 
the same general principles, the pubUc nature of the 
railroad business having already been established 
by a decision in 1872.' Another point was in- 
volved, however, because .of the contention of the 
attorneys for the companies that the railway char- 
ters were contracts and that the enforcement of the 
laws would amount to an impairment of contracts, 
which was forbidden by the G)nstitution. The 
court admitted that the charters were contracts 
but denied that state regulation could be considered 
an impairment of contracts unless the terms of the 
charter were specific. Moreover, it was pointed 
out that contracts must be interpreted in the light 
of rights reserved to the State in its constitution 

' Olcott VB, The Superviflon, 16 Wallace, 678. 



CURBING THE RAILROADS 50 

and in the light of its general laws of incorporation 
under which the charters were granted. 

These court decisions established principles which 
even now are of vital concern to business and poli- 
tics. From that time to this no one has denied the 
right of States to fix maximum charges for any 
business which is public in its nature or which has 
been clothed with a pubUc interest; nor has the in- 
clusion of the railroad and warehouse businesses in 
that class been questioned. The opinion, however, 
that this right of the States is unlimited, and there- 
fore not subject to judicial review, has been practi- 
cally reversed. In 1890 the Supreme Court de- 
clared a Minnesota law invalid because it denied a 
judicial hearing as to the reasonableness of rates'; 
and the courts now assume it to be their right and 
duty to determine whether or not rates fixed by 
legislation are so low as to amount to a deprivation ^ 
of property without due process of law. In spite 
of this later limitation upon the power of the 
States, the Granger decisions have furnished the/ 
legal basis for state regulation of railroads down > ' 
to the present day. Th ey are the most signffi cant 
a chievemen ts of the anti-m onopo ly movement of 
the seventies. 

> 134 United States Reports, 418. 




/. 



CHAPTER V 

THE COLLAPSE OF THE ORANOEB MOVEMENT 

/ — The first phase of the agrarian crusade, which cen- 
tered around and took its distinctive name from 
the Grange, reached its highwater mark in 1874. 
<^arly in the next year the tide began to ebb.^ The 
number of Granges decreased rapidly during the re- 
mainder of the decade, and of over twenty thou- 
sand in 1874 only about four thousand were alive 
in 1880. 

Several causes contributed to this sudden decline. 
. y Any organization which grows^so rapidly is prone 
to decay with equal rapidity; the slower growths 
are better rooted and are more likely to reach frui- 
tion. So with the Grange. Many farmers had 
joined the order, attracted by its novelty and vogue ; 
others joined the organization in the hope that it 
would prove a panacea for all the ills that agricul- 
ture is heir to and then left it in disgust when they 
found its success neither immediate nor universal. 

60 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 61 

Its methods of organization, too, while admirably / 
adapted to arousing enthusiasm and to securing 
new chapters quickly, <3id not make for stability 
and permanence.^The Grange deputy, as the or- 
ganizer was termed, did not do enough of what the * 
salesman calls *'fi^lo w-up wo rk. " He went into a 
town, persuaded an influential farmer to go about 
with him in a house-to-house canvass, talked to the 
other farmers of the vicinity, stirred them up to 
interest and excitement, organized a Grange, and 
then l eft the t own: If he happened to^choose the 
right material, the chapter became an active and 
floiu'ishing organization; if he did not choose wisely, 
it might drag along in a perfunctory existence or 
even lapse entirely. Then, too, the deputy's ig- / 
norance of local conditions sometimes led him to v/ 
open the door to, the farmers' enemies. There can 
be Kttle doubt that insidious . harm was worked 
through the admission into the Grange ef men who 
were farmers only incidentally and whose "inter- 
est in agricultiu'e" was limited to making profits 
from the farmer rather than from the farm. As 
D. Wyatt Aiken, deputy for the Grange in the 
Southern States and later member of the executive 
committee of the National Grange, shrewdly com- 
mented) "Everybody wanted to join the Grange 



62 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

then; lawyers, to get clients; doctors, to get cus- 
tomers; Shylocks, to get their pound of flesh; and 
sharpers, to catch the babes in the woods/' 

Not only the members who managed thus to in- 
sinuate themselves into the order but also the le- 
gitimat^^embers proved hard to control. With 
that hostility to concentrated authority which so 
j often and so lamentably manifests itself in a demo- 
' cratic body, the rank and file looked with suspicion 
upon the few men who constituted the National 
Grange. The average farmer was interested main- 
ly in local issues, conditions, and problems, and 
looked upon the National Grange not as a means 
of helping him in local affairs, but as a combination 
of monopolists who had taken out a patent on 
the local grange and forced him to pay a royalty 
in order to enjoy its privileges. The demand for 
reduction in the power of the National Grange led 
to frequent attempts to revise the constitution in 
ike direction of decentralization; and the revisions 
Here wch as merely to impair the power of the Na- 
|| yifcal Grange without satisfying the discontented 



01 iH the causes of the rapid collapse of the 

^^ ^ movement, the unfortunate experience 

V^ ^Ii|g^||hilinaerahadintheirattemptsiatbii3iness 

J 




t-h. 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 6S 

cooperation was probably chief. Their hatred of j 
the middleman and of the manufacturer was almost^ 
as intense as their hostility to the railroad magnate ;j 
quite naturally, therefore, the farmers attemptcSl 
to use their new organizations as a means of elimi- 
nating the one and controlling the other. As in the 
parallel case of the railroads, the farmers' ani- 
mosity, though it was probably greater than the 
provocation warranted, was not without grounds. 
The middlemen — the commission merchants 
to whom the farmer sold his produce and the retail 
dealers from whom he bought his supplies — did 
undoubtedly make use of their opportunities to 
drive hard bargains. The commission merchant 
had such facilities for storage and such knowledge 
of market conditions that he frequently could take 
advantage of market fluctuations to increase his 
profits. The farmer who sold his produce at a 
ylow price and then saw it disposed of as a much 
higher figure was naturally enraged, but he could 
devise no adequate remedy. Attempts to regu- 
late market conditions by creating an artificial . 
shortage seldom met with success. The slogan 
**Hold your hogs" was more effective as a catch- 
wpcdJLhaii^ASL. an .-economic ^weapon. The retail 
dealers, no less than the commission men, seemed 



64 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

to the fanner to be unjust in their dealings with 
him. In the small agricultural communities there 
was practically no competition. Even where there 
were several merchants in one town these could, 
and frequently did, combine to fix prices which the 
farmer had no alternative but to pay. What irked 
the farmer most in connection with these "extor- 
tions " was that the middleman seemed to be a non- 
producer, a parasite who lived by di aining the agri- 
cultural classes of the wealth which they produced. 
Even those farmers who recognized the middleman 
as a necessity had Kttle conception of the intricacy 
and value of his service. 

"^ Against the manufacturer, too, the farmer had 
his grievances. He felt that the system of patent 
rights for farm machinery resulted in unfair prices 
^^ — for was not this same machinery shipped to 
Europe and there sold for less than the retail price 
in the United States? Any one could see that the 
manufacturer must have been making more than 
reasonable profit on domestic sales. Moreover, * 
there were at this time many abuses of patent 
rights. Patents about to expire were often ex- 
tended through political influence or renewed by 
means of sUght changes which were claimed to 
be improvements. A more serious defect in the 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 65 

patent system was that new patents were not thor- 
oughly investigated, so that occasionally one was 
issued on an article which had long been in common 
use. That a man should take out a patent for the 
manufacture of a sliding gate which farmers had 
for years crudely constructed for themselves and/ 
should then collect royalty from those who were 
using the gates they had made, naturally enough 
aroused the wrath of his victims. 

It was but natural, then, that the Granges should 
be drawn into all sorts of schemes to divert into the 
pockets of their members the streams of wealth 
which had previously flowed to the greedy middle- 
men. The members of the National Grange, think- 
ing that these' early schemes for cooperation were 
premature, did not at first take them up and stand- 
ardize them but left them entirely in the hands of 
local, county, and state Granges. These there- 
upon proceeded to "gang their ain gait" through 
the unf amiUar paths of business operations and too 
frequently brought up in a quagmire. " This pur- 
chasing business," said Kelley in 1867, "com- 
menced with buying jackasses; the prospects are 
that many will be sold. " But the Grangers went 
on with their plans for business co5peration with 
ardor undampened by such forebodings. Sometimes 



66 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

a local Grange would make a bargain with a cer- 
tain dealer of the vicinity, whereby members were 
allowed special rates if they bought with cash 
and traded only with that dealer. More often the 
local grange would establish an agency, with either 
a paid or a voluntary agent who would forward the 
orders of the members in large lots to the manu- 
facturers or wholesalers and would thus be able to 
purchase supplies for cash at terms considerably 
lower than the retail prices. Frequently, realizing 
that they could get still more advantageous terms 
for larger orders, the Granges established a county 
agency which took over the work of several local 
agents. Sometimes the Patrons even embarked 
upon the more ambitious enterprise of cooperative 
stores. 

. The most common type of cooperative store was 
that in which the capital was provided by a stock 
company of Grange members and which sold goods 
to Patrons at very low prices. The profits, when 
there were any, were divided among the stock- 
holders in proportion to the amount of stock they 
held, just as in any stock company. This type of 
store was rarely successful for any length of time. 
The low prices at which it sold goods were likely to 
involve it in competition with other merchants. 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 67 

Frequently these men would combine to lower their 
prices and, by a process familiar in the history of 
business competition, " freeze out " the cooperative - 
store, after which they might restore their prices to 
the old levels. The farmers seldom had sufBcient 
spirit to buy at the Grange store if they found better 
bargains elsewhere; so the store was assiu*ed of its 
dient^e only so long as it sold at the lowest pos- 
sible prices. Farmers' agencies for the disposal of ^ * 
produce met with greater success. Cooperative 
creameries and elevators in several States are said 
to have saved Grange members thousands of dol- 
lars. Sometimes the state Grange, instead of set- ■ V 
ting up in the business of selling produce, chose 
certain firms as Grange agents and advised Patrons 
to sell through these firms. Where the choice was 
wisely made, this system seems to have saved the 
farmers about as much money without involving 
them in the risks of business. 

By 1876 the members of the National Grange 
had begun to study the problem of cooperation 
in retailing goods and had come to the conclu- . 
sion that the so-called " Rochdal e plan," a system ^^ 
worked out by an English association, was the most 
practicable for the cooperative store. The Nation- 
al Grange therefore recommended this type of 



68 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

organization. The stock of these stores wa^ sold 
^ only to Patrons, at five dollars a share and in 
limited amounts; thus the stores were owned by 
a large number of stockholders, all of whom had 
equal voice in the management of the company. 
The stores sold goods at ordinary rates, and then at 
the end of the year, after paying a small dividend 
on the stock, divided their profits among the pur- 
chasers, according to the amounts purchased. 
This plan eliminated the violent competition which 
occurred when a store attempted to sell goods at 
cost, and at the same time saved the piu'chaser 
, quite as much. Unfortunately the Rochdale plan 
' found Uttle favor among farmers in the Middle 
^West because of their unfortunate experience 
with other cooperative ventures. In the East and 
South, however, it was adopted more generally and 
met with sufiicient success to testify to the wis- 
dom of the National Grange in recommending it. 
In its attitude toward manufacturing, the Na- 
^ tional Grange was less sane. Not content with the 
..^ eUmination of the middlemen, the farmers were 
determined to control the manufacture of their 
implements. With tiie small manufacturer they 
managed to deal fairly well, for they could usually 
find some one who would supply the Grange with 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 69 

implements at less than the retail price. In Iowa, 
where the state Grange early established an agency 
for cooperative buying, the agent managed to per- 
suade a manufacturer of plows to give a discount 
to Grangers. As a result, this manufacturer's plows 
are reported to have left the factory with the paint 
scarcely dry, while his competitors, who had refused 
to make special terms, had difficulty in disposing of 
their stock. But the manufacturers of harvesters 
persistently refused to sell at wholesale rates. The 
Iowa Grange thereupon determined to do its own ' 
manufacturing and succeeded in buying a patent ) 
for a harvester which it could make and sell for ' 
about half what other harvesters cost. In 1874 
some 250 of these machines were manufactured, 
and the prospects looked bright. 

Deceived by the apparent success of grange 
manuf actiuring in Iowa, officers of the order at once 
planned to embark in manufacturing on a large / 
scale. The National Grange was rich in funds 
at this time; it had within a year received well 
over $250,000 in dispensation fees from seventeen 
thousand new Granges. Angered at what was felt 
to be the tyranny of monopoly, the officers of the \ 
National Grange decided to use this capital in man- 
ufacturing agricultural implements which were to 



1 



70 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

be sold to Patrons at very low prices. They went 
about the country buying patents for all sorts of 
farm implements, but not always maJdng sure of 
the worth of the machinery or the validity of the 
patents. In Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, 
Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, they planned fac- 
tories to make harvesters, plows, wagons, sewing- 
machines, threshing-machines, and all sorts of farm 
implements. Then came the crash. The Iowa 
harvester factory failed in 1875 and bankrupted the 
state Grange. Other failures followed; suits for 
patent infringements were brought against some of 
the factories; local Granges disbanded for fear they 
might be held responsible for the debts incurred; 
and in the Northwest, where the activity had been 
the greatest, the order almost disappeared. 

Although the Grange had a mushroom growth, 
it nevertheless exerted a real and endiu'ing influ- 
ence upon farmers both as individuals and as mem- 
^bers of a class. Even the experiments in coopera- 
tion, disastrous though they were in the end, were 
not without useful results. While they lasted they 
undoubtedly effected a considerable saving for the 
farmers. As Grange agents or as stockholders in 
coSperative stores or Grange factories, many far m^ 
ers gained valuable business experience wfiflpr 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 71 

helped to prevent them from being victimized 
thereafter. The farmers learned, moreover, the 
wisdom of working through the accepted channels "^ 
of business. Those who had scoffed at the Roch- 
dale plan of cooperation, in the homely belief that 
any scheme made in America must necessarily be 
better than an English importation, came to see 
that self-confidence and independence must be 
tempered by willingness to learn from the expe- 
rience of others. Most important of all, these ex-'^^ 
periments in business taught the farmers that the^, 
middlemen and manufacturers performed services S 
essential to the agriculturalist and that the produc- / 
tion and distribution of manufactured articles and 
the distribution of crops are far more complex affairs 
than the farmers had imagined and perhaps worthy . 
of more compensation than they had been accus- 
tomed to think just. On their side, the manufaC' ' ^ 
turers and dealers learned that the farmers were 
not entirely helpless and that to gain their good- 
will by fair prices was on the whole wiser than to 

force them into competition. Thus these ventures / 

'.* 

result«drin the development of a new* tolerance 

. « /f * 
and a 0ew respect between the two traditionally 

antagonistic classes. 

The social and intellectual stimulus which the ^ 



72 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

^, farmers received from the movement was probably 
. even more important than any direct political or 

V economic results. It is difficult for the present 
generation to form any conception of the dreari- 
ness and dullness of farm life half a century ago. 
Especially in the West, where farms were large, op- 
portunities for social intercourse were few, and 
weeks might pass without the farmer seeing any 
but his nearest neighbors. For his wife existence 
was even more drear. She went to the market 
town less often than he and the routine of her life 
on the farm kept her close to the farmhouse and 
prevented visits even to her neighbors' dwellings. 
The difficulty of getting domestic servants made 
the work of the farmer's wife extremely laborious; 
and at that time there were none of the modern 
conveniences which lighten work such as power 
chiu*ns, cream separators, and washing-machines. 
Even more than the husband, the wife was likely to 
degenerate into a drudge without the hope — and 
eventually without the desire — of anything better. 
The church formed, to be sure, a means of social 
intercourse; but according to prevailing religious 
notions the churchyard was not the place nor the 
Sabbath the time for that healthy but unrestrained 
hilarity which is essential to the well-being of man. 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 78 

Into lives thus circumscribed the Grange came as^^ 
a Uberalizing and upHfting influence. Its admis- ^- 
sion of women into the order on the same terms 
as men made it a real commimity servant and gave 
both women and men a new sense of the dignity of 
woman. More important perhaps than any change 
in theories concemmg womankind, it afforded an 
opportimity for men and women to work and play 
together, apparently much to the satisfaction and 
enjoyment of both sexes. Not only in Grange 
meetings, which came at least once a month and 
often more frequently, but also in Grange picnics 
and festivals the farmers and their wives and chil- 
dren came together for joyous human intercourse. 
Such frequent meetings were bound to work a 
change of heart. Much of man's self-respect arises 
from the esteem of others, and the desire to keep 
that esteem is certainly a powerful agent in social 
welfare. It was reported that in many communi- 
ties the advent of the Grange created a marked im- 
provement in the dress and manners of the mem- 
bers. Crabbed men came out of their shells and 
grew genial; disheartened women became cheerful; 
repressed children delighted in the chance to play 
with other boys and girls of their own age. 

The ritual of the Grange, inculcating lessons of 



74 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

orderliness, industry, thrift, and temperance, ex^ 
pressed the members' ideals in more dignified and 
pleasing language than they themselves could have 
invented. The songs of the Grange gave an op- 
portunity for the exercise of the musical sense of 
people not too critical of literary quahty, when 
with "spontaneous trills on every tongue," as one 
of the songs has it, the members varied the ritual 
with music. 

m-m One of the virtues especially enjoined on Grange 
members was charity. Ceres, Pomona, and Flora, 
oflSces of the Grange to be filled only by women, 
were made to represent Faith, Hope, and Charity, 
respectively; and in the ceremony of dedicating 
the Grange hall these three stood always beside the 
altar while the chaplain read the thirteenth chap- 
ter of First Corinthians. Not only in theory but 
in practice did the order proclaim its devotion to 
charitable work. It was not uncommon for mem- 
bers of a local Grange to foregather and haH^est the 
crops for a sick brother or help rebuild a house de- 
stroyed by fire or tornado. In times of drought or 
plague both state and national Granges were gener- 
ous in donations for the sufferers; in 1874, when 
the Mississippi River overflowed its banks in its 
lower reaches, money and supplies were sent to the 



COLLAPSE OF THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 75 

farmers of Louisiana and Alabama; again in the 
same year reKef was sent to those Patrons who 
suffered from the grasshopper pUtgue west of the 
Mississippi; and in 1876 money was sent to South 
Carolina to aid sufferers from a prolonged drought f[ 
in that State. These charitable deeds, endearing 
giver and receiver to each other, resulted in a bet- 
ter understanding and a greater tolerance between 
people of different parts of the country. 

The meetings of the local Granges were forums 
in which the members trained themselves in pub-^ 
lie speaking and parliamentary practice. Pro- 
grams were arranged, sometimes with the help of 
suggestions from officers of the state Grange; and 
the discussion of a wide variety of topics, mostly 
economic and usually concerned especially with the 
interests of the farmer, could not help being stimu- 
lating, even if conclusions were sometimes reached 
which were at variance with orthodox political 
economy. The Grange was responsible, too, for a 
great increase in the number and circulation of agri^ 
cultural journals. Many of these papers were rec- 
ognized as official organs of the order and, by pub- 
lishing news of the Granges and discussing the 
political and economic phases of the farmers* move- 
ment, they built up an extensive circulation. Rural 




*■ 



76 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

postmasters everywhere reported a great increase 
in their mails after the estabhshment of a Grange 
in the vicinity. One said that after the advent of 
the order there were thirty newspapers taken at his 
office where previously there had been but one. 
Papers for which members or local Granges sub- 
scribed were read, passed from hand to hand, and 
thoroughly discussed. This is good evidence that 

"" farmers were forming the habit of reading. All 
the Granger laws might have been repealed; all 

. the schemes for cooperation might have come to 
naught; all the moral and religious teachings of the 
Grange might have been left to the church; but 
if the Granger movement had created nothing 
else than this desire to read, it would have been 
worth while. For after the farmer began to read, 
he was no longer like deadwood floating in the 
backwaters of the current; he became more like 
a propelled vessel in midstream — sometimes, to 
be sure, driven into turbulent waters, sometimes 
tossed about by conflicting currents, but at least 
making progress. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 



Whatever may have been the causes of the col- 
lapse of the Granger movement in 1875 and 1876, 
returning prosperity for the Western farmer was 
certainly not one of them, for the general agricul- 
tural depression showed no signs of lifting until 
nearly the end of the decade. During the Granger 
period the farmer attempted to increase his narrow 



margin of profit or to turn a deficit into a profit by, j 
decreasing the cost of transportation and eliminat- [ 
ing the middleman. FaiUng in this attempt, he V 
decided that the remedy for the situation was to be ^ \ 
found in increasing the prices for his products and / "" ^ 
checking the appreciation of his debts by increas- \ 
ing the amount of money in circulation. y 

This demand for currency inflation was by no ^^ 
means new when it was taken up by the West- 
em farmers. It had played a prominent r -^t in 
American history from colonial days, especially in 

77 



78 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

periods of depression and in the less prosperous 
sections of the ever advancing frontier. During 
the Civil War, inflation was actually accomplished 
through the issue of over $400,000,000 in legal-ten- 
der notes known as '"greenbacks." No definite 
time for the redemption of these notes was speci- 
fied, and they quickly declined in value as com- 
pared with gold. At the dose of the war a paper 
dollar was worth only about half its face value in 
gold. An attempt was made to raise the relative 
value of the greenbacks and to prepare for the re- 
sumption of specie payments by retiring the paper 
money from circulation as rapidly as possible* 
This pohcy meant, of course, a contraction of the 
volume of currency and consequently met with 
immediate opposition. In February, 1868, Con- 
gress prohibited the further retirement of green- 
backs and left to the discretion of the Secretary of 
the Treasury the reissue of the $44,000,000 which 
had been retired. Only small amounts were reis- 
sued, however, until after the panic of 1873; and 
when Congress attempted, in April, 1874, to force a 
permanent increase of the currency to $400,000,000, 
President Grant vetoed the bill. 

Closely related to the currency problem was that 
of the medium to be used in the payment of the 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 79 

principal of bonds issued during the Civil War. 
When the bonds were sold, it was generally under- 
stood that they would be redeemed in gold or its 
equivalent. Some of the issues, however, were 
covered by no specific declaration to that efiFect, 
and a considerable sentiment arose in favor of re- 
deeming them with currency, or lawful money, as 
it was called. 

These questions were not party issues at first, 
and there was no clear-cut division upon them be- 
tween the two old parties throughout the period. 
The alinement was by class and section rather than 
by party; and inflationists and advocates of the re- 
demption of the bonds in currency were to be found 
not only among the rank and file but also among 
the leaders of both parties. The failure of either 
the Democrats or the RepubKcans to take a de- 
cided stand on these questions resulted, as so often 
before, in the development of third parties which 
made them the main planks in the new platform. 

The first attempts at organized political activity 
in behalf of greenbackism came not from the farm- 
ers of the West but from the laboring men of the 
East, whose growing class consciousness resulted 
in the organization of the National Labor Union in 
1868. Accompanying, if not resulting from the 



\ 



80 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Government's policy of contraction, came a fall of 
prices and widespread unemployment. It is not 
strange, therefore, that this body at once declared 
itself in favor of inflation. The plan proposed was 
what was known as the "American Systeni of Fi- 
nance " : money was to be issued only by the Gov- 
ernment and in the form of legal-tender paper re- 
deemable only with bonds bearing a low rate of 
interest, these bonds in turn to be convertible into 
greenbacks at the option of the holder. The Na- 
tional Labor Union recommended the nomination 
of workingmen's candidates for offices and made 
arrangements for the organization of a National 
Labor party. This convened in Columbus in Feb- 
ruary, 1872, adopted a Greenback platform, and 
nominated David Davis of Illinois as its candidate 
for the presidency. After the nomination of Hor- 
ace Greeley by the Liberal RepubUcans, Davis 
declined this nomination, and the executive com- 
mittee of his party then decided that it was too late 
to name another candidate. 

This early period of inflation propaganda has 
been described as "the social reform period, or 
the wage-earners' period of greenbackism, as dis- 
tinguished from the inflationist, or farmers' period 
that followed." The primary objects of the labor 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 81 

reformers were, it appears, to lower the rate of inter- 
est on money and to reduce taxation by the trans- 
formation of the war debt into interconvertible 
bonds. The farmers, on the other hand, were inter- 1 
ested primarily in the expansion of the currency in ^.^^4 
the hope that this would result in higher prices foi^ 
their products. It was not until the panic of 1873. / 
: had intensified the agricultural depression and the 
. Granger movement had failed to reheve the situa- 
ntion that the farmers of the West took hold of 
' jgreenbackism and made it a major poUtical issue. / 
The independent parties of the Granger period, , 
as a rule, were not in favor of inflation. Their 
platforms in some cases demanded a speedy return 
to specie payment. In 1873 Ignatius Donnelly, -^ 
in a pamphlet entitled Facts for the Granges y de- / 
clared: "There is too much paper money. The 
currency is diluted — watered — weakened. . . . 
We have no interest in an inflated money market. ■"' 
... As we have to sell our wheat at the world's 
price, it is our interest that everything we buy 
should be at the world's price. Specie payments 
would practically add eighteen cents to the price 
of every bushel of wheat we have to sell!" In 
Indiana and Illinois, however, the independent 
parties were captured by the Greenbackers, and 



82 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the Indiana party issued the call for the confer- 
ence at Indianapolis in November, 1874, which led 
to the organization of the National Greenback 
party. 

This conference was attended by representatives 
from seven States and included several who had 
been prominent in the Labor Reform movement. 
"The pohtical Moses of the *New Party, ' " accord- 
ing to the Chicago Trihune^ was James Buchanan 
of Indianapolis, a lawyer "with an abiUty and 
shrewdness that compel respect, however much his 
theories may be ridiculed and abused." He was 
also the editor of the Sun^ a weekly paper which 
supported the farmers' movement. The platform 
committee of the conference reported in favor of 
"a new pohtical organization of the people, by the 
people, and for the people, to restrain the aggres- 
sions of combined capital upon the rights and in- 
terests of the masses, to reduce taxation, correct 
abuses, and to purify all departments of the Gov- 
ernment." The most important issue before the 
people was declared to be "the proper solution of 
the money question," meaning thereby the issue 
of greenbacks interconvertible with bonds. A na- 
tional convention of the party was called to meet at 
Cleveland oh March 11, 1875. 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 88 

The Cleveland convention, attended by repre- 
sentatives of twelve States, completed the organiza- 
tion of the Independent party, as it was officially 
named, and made arrangements for the nominat- 
ing convention. This was held at Indianapolis 
on May 17, 1876, with 240 delegates representing 
eighteen States. Ignatius Donnelly, who had ap- 
parently changed his mind on the currency ques- 
tion since 1873, was the temporary president. The 
platform contained the usual endorsement of a 
circulating medium composed of legal-tender notes 
interconvertible with bonds but gave first place to 
a demand for ^^the immediate and unconditional 
repeal of the specie-resumption act." This meas- 
ure, passed by Congress in January, 1875, had 
fixed January 1, 1879, as the date when the Gov- 
ernment would redeem greenbacks at their face 
value in coin. Although the act made provision 
for the permanent retirement of only a part of the 
greenbacks from circulation, the new party de- 
noimced it as a "suicidal and destructive policy of 
contraction. " Another plank in the platform, and 
one of special interest in view of the later free silver 
agitation, was a protest against the sale of bonds 
for the purpose of purchasing silver to be sub- 
stituted for the fractional currency of war times. 



84 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

This measure, it was asserted, ^'although well 
calculated to enrich owners of silver mines . . . 
will still further oppress, in taxation, an already 
overburdened people." 

There was a strong movement in the convention 
for the nomination of David Davis for the presi- 
dency, but this seems to have met with opposition 
from Eastern delegates who remembered his deser- 
tion of the National Labor Reform party in 1872. 
Peter Cooper of New York was finally selected 
as the candidate. He was a philanthropist rather 
than a politician and was now eighty-five years old. 
Having made a large fortune as a pioneer in the 
manufacture of iron, he left his business cares to 
other members of his family and devoted himself 
to the education and elevation of the working 
classes. His principal contribution to this cause 
was the endowment of the famous Cooper Union 
in New York, where several thousand persons, 
mostly mechanics, attended classes in a variety 
of technical and educational subjects and enjoyed 
the privileges of a free library and reading room. 
When notified of his nomination. Cooper at first 
expressed the hope that one or both of the old 
parties might adopt such currency planks as would 
make the new movement unnecessary. Later he 



THE GREENBACK INTEHLUDE 85 

aocepted unconditionally but took no active part 
in the campaign. 

The Greenback movement at first made but slow 
progress in the various States. In Indiana and 
Illinois the existing independent organizations be- 
came component parts of the new party, although 
in Illinois, at least, quite a number of the former 
leaders returned to the old parties. In the other 
Western States, however, the third parties of the 
Granger period had gone to pieces or had been ab- 
sorbed by means of fusion, and new organizations 
had to be created. In Indiana the Independent 
party developed sufficient strength to scare the 
Republican leaders and to cause one of them to 
write to Hayes: "A bloody-shirt campaign, with 
money, and Indiana is safe; a financial campaign 
and no money and we are beaten.*' 

The Independents do not appear to have made 
a very vigorous campaign in 1876. The coflFers of 
the party were as empty as the pockets of the farm- 
ers who were soon to swell its ranks; and this made 
a campaign of the usual sort impossible. One big 
meeting was held in Chicago in August, with Sam- 
uel F. Cary, the nominee for Vice-President, as 
the principal attraction; and this was followed 
by a torchlight procession. A number of papers 



86 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

published by men who were active in the movement, 
such as Buchanan's Indianapolis Star, Noonan's 
Industrial Age of Chicago, and Donnelly's Anti- 
Mcmopolisl of St. Paul, labored not without avail to 
spread the gospel among their readers. The most 
eflFective means of propaganda, however, was prob- 
ably the Greenback Club. At a conference in 

! Detroit in August, 1875, "the organization of 
Greenback Clubs in every State in the Union" was 
recommended, and the work was carried on under 
the leadership of Marcus M. Pomeroy. "Brick" 

\ Pomeroy was a journalist, whose sobriquet resulted 
from a series of Brickdust Sketches of prominent 
Wisconsin men which he published in one of his 
papers. As the editor of Brick Pomeroy^s Demo- 
craty a sensational paper published in New York, 
he had gained considerable notoriety. In 1875, 
after the failure of this enterprise he undertook to 
retrieve his broken fortunes by editing a Greenback 
paper in Chicago and by organizing Greenback 
dubs for which this paper served as an organ. 
Pomeroy also wrote and circulated a series of tracts 
with such alluring titles as Hot Drops and Meat for 
Men. Several thousand clubs were organized in 
the Northwest diuing the next few years, princi- 
pally in the rural regions, and the secrecy of their 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 87 

proceedings aroused the fear that they were ad- 
vocating communism. The members of the clubs 
and their leaders constituted, as a matter of fact, 
the more radical of the Greenbackers. They usu- 
ally opposed fusion with the Democrats and often 
refused to follow the regular leaders of the party. 

In the election the Greenback ticket polled only 
about eighty thousand votes, or less than one per 
cent of the total. In spite of the activity of former 
members of the Labor Reform party in the move- 
ment, Pennsylvania was the only Eastern State in 
which the new party made any considerable show- 
ing. In the West over 6000 votes were cast in 
each of the five States — Indiana, HUnois, Michi- 
gan, Iowa, and Kansas. The agrarian aspect of the 
movement was now uppermost, but the vote of 
17,000 polled in Illinois, though the largest of the 
group, was less than a quarter of the votes cast by 
the state Independent Reform party in 1874 when 
railroad regulation had been the dominant issue. 
Clearly many farmers were not yet convinced of 
the necessity of a Greenback party. The only 
tangible achievement of the party in 1876 was the 
election of a few members of the Illinois Legislature 
who held the balance between the old parties and 
were instrumental in sending David Davis to the 



x/.- 



r 

88 THE 4JbRABIAN CRUSADE 

United States Senate, This vote, it is interesting 
to note, kept Davis from serving on the electoral 
^ commission and thus probably prevented Tilden 
/r from becoming President. 

But the Greenback movement was to find fresh 
f impetus in 1877, a year of exceptional imrest and 
discontent throughout the Union. The agricul- 
^ tural depression was even greater than in preced- 
ing years, while the great railroad strikes were evi- 
dence of the distress of the workingmen. This situ- 
ation was reflected in politics by the rapid growth 
* of the Greenback party and the reappearance of 
labor parties with Greenback planks.' 

In the following year the new party had an ex- 
cellent opportimity to demonstrate its strength 
wherever it existed. In February, 1878, a confer- 
ence was held at Toledo for the purpose of welding 
the various political organizations of workingmen 

' In state elections from Massachusetts to Kansas the Greenback 
and labor candidates polled from 5 to 15 per cent of the total vote, and 
in most cases the Greenback vote would probably have been much 
greater had not one or the other, and in some cases both, of the old 
parties incorporated part of theGreenback demands in their platforms. 
In Wisconsin, for example, there was little difference between Demo- 
crats and Greenbackers on the currency question, and even the Re- 
publicans in their platform leaned toward inflation, although the 
candidates declared against it. No general elections were held in 
1877 in some of the States where the Greenback sentiment was most 
pronounced. 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 89 

and advocates of inflation into an effective weapon 
as a single united party. This conference, which 
was attended by several hundred delegates from 
twenty-eight States, adopted "National** as the ** 
name of the party, but it was usually known from 
this time on as the Greenback Labor party. The / 
Toledo platform, as the resolutions adopted by this , 
conference came to be designated, first denounced 
"the limiting of the legal-tender quality of green- 
backs, the changing of currency-bonds into coin- 
bonds, the demonetization of the silver dollar, the 
excepting of bonds from taxation, the contraction 
of the circulating medium, the proposed forced re- 
sumption of specie payments, and the prodigal 
waste of the public lands." The resolutions which 
followed demanded the suppression of bank notes 
and the issue of all money by the Government, such 
money to be full legal-tender at its stamped value 
and to be provided in sufficient quantity to insure 
the full employment of labor and to establish a rate 
of interest which would secure to labor its just re- 
ward. Other planks called for the coinage of silver ^ 
on the same basis as that of gold, reservation of the 
public lands for actual settlers, legislative reduction 
of the hours of labor, establishment of labor bu- 
reaus, abolition of the contract system of employing 



J 



90 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

^ prison labor, and suppression of Chinese immigra- 
tion. It is clear that in this platform the interests 
^ of labor received full consideration. Just before 
the conference adjourned it adopted two additional 
resolutions. One of these, adopted in response to 
a telegram from General B. F. Butler, denounced 
the silver bill just passed by Congress because it 
had been so modified as to limit the amount of 
silver to be coined. The other, which was oflFered 
by "Brick** Pomeroy, declared: "We will not 
afBliate in any degree with any of the old parties, 
>J but in all cases and localities will organize anew 
•n/ . . . and . . . vote only for men who entirely 
abandon old party lines and organizations." This 
attempt to forestall fusion was to be of no avail, 
as the sequel will show, but Pomeroy and his fol- 
lowers in the Greenback clubs adhered throughout 
to their declaration. 
f W In the elections of 1878, the high-water mark of 
• . the movement, about a million votes were cast for 
/ Greenback candidates. Approximately two-thirds 
j of the strength of the party was in the Middle West 
^ and one-third in the East. That the movement, 
even in the East, was largely agrarian, is indicated 
by the famous argument of Solon Chase, chairman 
of the party convention in Maine. "Inflate the 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 91 

currency, and you raise the price of my steers and 
at the same time pay the public debt." "Them 
steers " gave Chase a prominent place in politics for 
half a decade. The most important achievement 
of the movement at this time was the election to 
Congress of fifteen members who were classified as 
Nationals — six from the East, six from the Middle 
West, and three from the South. In most cases 
these men secured their election through fusion 
or through the failure of one of the old parties to 
make nominations. 

Easily first among the Greenbackers elected to 
Congress in 1878 was General James B. Weaver of ^ 
Iowa. When ten years of age. Weaver had been 
taken by his parents to Iowa from Ohio, his native 
State. In 1854, he graduated from a law school in 
Cincinnati, and for some years thereafter practiced 
his profession and edited a paper at Bloomfield in 
Davis County, Iowa. He enKsted in the army as 
a private in 1861, displayed great bravery at the 
battles of Donelson and Shiloh, and received rapid 
promotion to the rank of colonel. At the close of 
the war he received a commission as brigadier gen- 
eral by brevet. Weaver ran his first tilt in state 
politics in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the 
Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 



^ 



92 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

1 865 . Although an ardent advocate of prohibition 
and of state regulation of railroads. Weaver re- 
mained loyal to the Republican party during the 
Granger period and in 1875 was a formidable 
candidate for the gubernatorial nomination. It is 
said that a majority of the delegates to the conven- 
tion had been instructed in his favor, but the rail- 
road and liquor interests succeeded in stampeding 
the convention to Samuel J. Kirkwood, the popu- 
lar war governor. In the following year Weaver 
took part in the organization of the Independent or 
Greenback party in Iowa and accepted a position 
on its state committee. Though resentment at the 
treatment which he had received from the Repub- 
licans may have influenced him to break the old 
ties, he was doubtless sincerely convinced that the 
Republican party was beyond redemption and 
that the only hope for reform lay in the new party 
movement. 

Weaver was gifted with remarkable talent as an 
orator. His fine face and soldierly bearing, his rich 
sympathetic voice and vivid imagination, made 
him a favorite speaker at soldiers' reunions and in 
political campaigns. Lacking the eccentricities of 
so many of his third party associates and never 
inclined to go to extremes in his radicalism, he was 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 93 

one of the ablest and, from the standpoint of the' 
Republicans, the most dangerous of the Greenback < 
leaders. In Congress Weaver won the respect of ^ 
his colleagues. Always ready to promote what he • 
believed to be the interests of the common people ^ 
and especially of the farmers, he espoused the cause > 
of the Oklahoma ** boomers,*' who were opposed by 
a powerful lobby representing the interests of the 
"cattle barons." He declared that, in a choice 
between bullocks and babies, he would stand for 
babies, and he staged a successful filibuster at the 
close of a session in order to force the consideration 
of a bill for the opening of part of Oklahoma to 
settlement. 

The preliminaries of the campaign of 1880 were 
vexed by dissension within the ranks of the Green- 
backfers. In March the radical faction led by 
Pomeroy held a convention in St. Louis which 
claimed to speak for ten thousand Greenback clubs 
and two million voters. After Stephen D. Dil- 
laye of New York had refused the presidential 
nomination at the hands of this convention, it ad- 
journed to meet in Chicago on the 9th of June — 
the place and time already selected for the regular 
convention of the National party. One reason for 
the attitude of this faction appears to have been 



I ' ' 



M THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the fear of fusion with the Democrats. The Chi- 
cago convention finally succeeded in absorbing 
these malcontents, as well as a group of socialist 
delegates and representatives of various labor or- 
ganizations who asked to be admitted. Dennis 
Kearney, the notorious sand-lot agitator of Cali- 
fornia was made chief sergeant at arms, and Susan 
B. Anthony was allowed to give a suflFrage speech. 
The platform diflFered from earlier Greenback docu- 
ments in that it contained no denimciation of the 
Resumption Act. That was now a dead issue, for 
on January 1, 1879, resumption became an accom- 
plished fact, and the paper ciurency was worth its 
face value in gold. Apart from this the platform 
was much the same as that adopted at Toledo in 
1878, with the addition of planks favoring women's 
suffrage, a graduated income tax, and congressional 
regulation of interstate commerce. On the first 
ballot. General Weaver received a majority of the 
votes for presidential nominee; and B. J. Chambers 
of Texas was nominated for Vice-President. 

General Weaver in his letter of acceptance de- 
clared it to be his intention " to visit the various sec- 
tions of the Union and talk to the people." This he 
did, covering the country from Arkansas to Maine 
and from Lake Michigan to the Gulf, speaking 



■j> 



THE GBEENBACK INTERLUDE 95 

in Faneuil Hall at Boston and in the Cooper 
Union at New York, but spending the greater 
part of his time in the Southern States. He de- 
clared that he traveled twenty thousand miles, 
made fully one hundred speeches, shook the hands 
of thirty thousand people, and was heard by half a 

million. Weaver was the first presidential candi- iLfj 

•7 -■ 
date to conduct a campaign of this sort, and the^ 

results were not commensurate with his eflForts. The 
Greenback vote was only 308,578, about three per 
cent of the total. One explanation of the small 
vote would seem to be the usual disinclination of 
people to vote for a man who has no chance of elec- 
tion, however much they may approve of him and 
his principles, when they have the opportunity to 
make their votes count in deciding between two 
other candidates. Then, too, the sun of prosperity 7) 
was beginning at last to dissipate the clouds of 
depression. The crops of corn, wheat, and oats 
raised in 1880 were the largest the country had ever 
known ; and the price of com for once failed to de- 
cline as production rose, so that the crop was worth 
half as much again as that of 1878. When the 
farmer had large crops to dispose of at remunera- - 
tive prices, he lost interest in the inflation of the 
currency. 



96 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

^^ After 1880 the Greenback party rapidly disin- 
^? tegrated. There was no longer any hope of its be- 
coming a major party, in the near future at least, 
and the more conservative leaders began to drift 
back into the old parties or to make plans for fusion 
with one of them in coming elections. But fusion 
could at best only defer the end. The congression- 
al election of 1882 clearly demonstrated that the 
party was moribimd. Ten of the Congressmen 
\ elected in 1880 had been classified as Nationals; 
of these only one was reelected in 1882, and no new 
: names appear in the list. It is probable, however, 
that a number of Congressmen classified as Demo- 
crats owed their election in part to fusion between 
the Democratic and Greenback parties. 
f The last appearance of the Greenbackers in 
y\ national politics was in the presidential election of , 
/ 1884. In May of that year a convention of "The 
Anti-Monopoly Organization of the United States," 
held in Chicago, adopted a platform voicing a de- 
mand for legislative control of corporations and 
monopoUes in the interests of the people and nom- 
inated General Benjamin F. Butler for President. 
The convention of the Greenback or National 
party met in Indianapolis, and selected Butler as 
its candidate also. General Weaver presided over 



THE GREENBACK INTERLUDE 97 

the convention. The platform contained the usual 
demands of the party with the exception of the res- 
olution for the *'free and unlimited coinage of gold , 
and silver," which was rejected by a vote of 218 to 
164. It would appear that the majority of the 
delegates preferred to rely upon legal-tender paper 
to furnish the ample supply of money desired. 
General Butler was at this time acting with the 
Democrats m Massachusetts, and his first response 
was noncommittal. Although he subsequently ac- 
cepted both nominations, he did not make an ac- 
tive campaign, and his total popular vote was only 
175,370. Butler's personal popularity and his la- 
bor affiliations brought increased votes in some of 
the Eastern States and in Michigan, but in those 
Western States where the party had been strong- 
est in 1880 and where it had been distinctly a farm- 
ers' movement there was a great falling off in the 
Greenback vote. 

Though the forces of agrarian discontent at- 
tained national political organization for the first 
time in the Greenback party, its leaders were never // 
able to obtain the support of more than a minority 
of the farmers. The habit of voting the Republi- 
can or the Democratic ticket, firmly established 
by the Civil War and by Reconstruction, was too 



98 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

strong to be lightly broken; and many who favored 
inflation could not yet bring themselves to the 
point of supporting the Greenback party. On the 
other hand there were undoubtedly many farmers 
and others who felt that the old parties were hope- 
lessly subservient to capitalistic interests, who were 
ready to join in radical movements for reform and 
for the advancement of the welfare of the industrial 
classes, but who were not convinced that the struc- 
ture of permanent prosperity for farmer and work- 
ingman could be built on a foundation of fiat 
money. Although the platforms of the Green- 
backers contained many demands which were 

soundly progressive, inflfttinn wfl<^ |1ia pfl^n,yy|miTif 

USSUgJjOj^em; and with this issue the party was 
unable to obtain the support of all the forces of dis- 
content, radicalism, and reform which had been 
engendered by the economic and poUtical condi- 
tions of the times. The Greenback movement was 
ephemeral. Failing to solve the problem of agri- 
cultiu*al depression, it passed away as had the 
Granger movement before it; but the greater farm- 
ers' movement of which both were a part went on* 



CHAPTER Vn 



THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMEB 

An English observer of agricultural conditions in 
1893 finds that agricultural unrest was not peculiar \ 
to the United States in the last quarter of the nine- ' v 
teenth century, but existed in all the more advanced 
countries of the world: 



( 



Almost everywhere, certainly in England, France, ) 
Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and the United States, 
the agriculturists, formerly so instinctively conserva- 
tive, are becoming fiercely discontented, declare they 
gained less by civilization than the rest of the com- 
munity, and are looking about for remedies of a drastic 
nature. In England they are hoping for aid from 
councils of all kinds; in France they have put on pro- 
tective duties which have been increased in vain twice 
over; in Germany they put on and relaxed similar 
duties and are screaming for them again; in Scandi- 
navia — Denmark more particularly — they limit the 
aggregation of land; and in the United States they 
create organizations like the Grangers, the Farmers' 
Leagues, and the Populists.' 

s The SpecUOor, yoL LXX, p. 247. 

99 



'^Y^^sa,. 



100 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

It is to general causes, indeed, that one must turn 
before trying to find the local circumstances which 
aggravated the unrest in the United States, or at 
least appeared to do so. The appUcation of power 
— first steam, then electricity — to machinery had 
not only vastly increased the productivity of man- 
kind but had stimulated invention to still wider 
activity and lengthened the distance between man 
and that gaunt specter of famine which had dogged 
his footsteps from the beginning. With a con- 
stantly growing supply of the things necessary for 
the maintenance of life, population increased tre- 
mendously: England, which a few centuries be- 
fore had been overcrowded with fewer than four 
miUion people, was now more bountifully feeding 
and clothing forty millions. Perhaps, all in all, 
mankind was better off than it had ever been before; 
yet different groups maintained unequal progress. 
The tillers of the soil as a whole remained more 
nearly in their primitive condition than did the 
dwellers of the city. The farmer, it is true, pro- 
duced a greater yield of crops, was surrounded by 
more comforts, and was able to enjoy greater lei- 
sure than his kind had ever done before. The 
scythe and cradle had been supplanted by the 
mower and reaper; horse harrows, cultivators, and 



THE FLIGHT .OF THE FABMER 101 

rakes had transf errecl mtich of the physical exertion 
of farming to the draff animals. But, after all, the 
farmer owed less to steatk^ajid electricity than the 
craftsman and the artisan of. tiie cities. 

The American farmer, if he«fead the census re- 
ports, might learn that rural wcal^ had increased 
from nearly $4,000,000,000 in ISSato not quite 

$16,000,000,000 in 1890; but he would*also discover 

'J 

that in the same period urban wealth hairjl'ddvanced 
from a httle over $3,000,000,000 to more than 
$49,000,000,000. Forty years before the c^i^pi^l of 
rural districts comprised more than half that q$ die 
whole country, now it formed only twenty-five per 
cent. The riu'al population had shown a steady \ 
proportionate decrease: when the first census was 
taken in 1790, the dwellers of the country num- v 
bered more than ten times those of the city, but at 
the end of the nineteenth century they formed only 
about one-third of the total. Of coiu'se the intelli- 
gent farmer might have observed that food for the . 
consumption of all could be produced by the work 
of fewer hands, and vastly more bountifully as well, 
and so he might have explained the relative decline 
of rural population and wealth; but when the aver- 
age farmer saw his sons and his neighbors' sons 
more and more inclined to seek work in town and 



lose THE AGRARIAH'<mUSADE 

r • • 

leave the farm, he put two land two together and 
came to the conclusion XjxSLt farming was in a peril- 
ous state. He heard,th^,boy who had gone to the 
city boast that his hours were shorter, his toil less 
severe, and his retiina m money much greater than 
had been the cas^'on the farm; and he knew that 
this was true>*. Perhaps the farmer did not realize 
that he hadj^obie compensations: greater security 
of positipi^.ynd a reasonable expectation that old 

age w^iild' find him enjoying some sort of home, 

•I 

untroubled by the worry which might attend the 
artisan or shopkeeper. 

Whether or not the American farmer realized 
that the nineteenth century had seen a total change 
in the economic relations of the world, he did per- 
ceive clearly that something was wrong in his own 
case. The first and most impressive evidence of 
this was to be foimd in the prices he received for 
what he had to sell. From 1883 to 1889 inclusive 
the average price of wheat was seventy-three cents 
a bushel, of com thirty-six cents, of oats twenty- 
eight cents. In 1890 crops were poor in most of 
the grain areas, while prosperous times continued 
to keep the consuming public of the manufactur- 
ing regions able to buy; consequently com and oats 
nearly doubled in price, and wheat advanced iO 



THE PLIGHT OP THE PARMER 103 

per cent. Nevertheless, such was the shortage, ex- 
cept in the case of com, that the total return was 
smaller than it had been for a year or two before. 
In 1891 bumper crops of wheat, com, oats, rye, and ^ 
barley drove the price down on all except wheat 
and rye, but not to the level of 1889. Despite a 
much smaller harvest in 1892 the decline continued, 
to the intense disgust of the farmers of Nebraska 
and Minnesota who failed to note that the entire 
production of wheat in the world was normal in 
that year, that considerable stores of the previous 
crop had been held over and that more than a third 
of the yield in the United States was sent forth to 
compete everywhere with the crops of Argentine, 
Russia, and the other grain producing countries. 
No wonder the average farmer of the Mississippi 
basin was ready to give ear to any one who could 
suggest a remedy for his ills. 

Cotton, which averaged nearly eleven cents a 
pound for the decade ending in 1890, dropped to 
less than nine cents in 1891 and to less than eight 
in 1892. Cattle, hogs, sheep, horses, and mules 
brought more in the late than in the early eighties, 
yet these, too, showed a decKne about 1890. The 
abnormal war-time price of wool which was more 
than one dollar a pound in October, 1864, dropped 



104 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

precipitately with peace, rose a Kttle just before the 
panic of 1873, and then declined with ahnost no re- 
action until it reached thirty-three cents for the 
highest grade in 189S. 

The "roaring eighties," with all their superficial 
appearance of prosperity, had apparently not 
brought equal cheer to all. And then came the 
"heart-breaking nineties." In February, 1893, 
the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company 
failed, a break in the stock market followed, and an 
old-fashioned panic seized the country in its grasp. 
A period of hitherto unparalleled speculative fren- 
zy came thus to an end, and sober years followed 
in which the American people had ample opportu- 
nity to contemplate the evils arising from their 
economic debauch. 

Prices of agricultiu'al products continued their 
downward trend. Wheat touched bottom in 1894 
with an average price of forty-nine cents; com, two 
years later, reached twenty-one cents. All the 
other grains were likewise affected. Middling cot- 
ton which had sold at eight and a half cents a 
pound in 1893, dropped below seven cents the fol- 
lowing year, recovered until it reached nearly eight 
cents in 1896, and was at its lowest in 1898 at just 
under six cents. Of all the marketable products of 



THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 105 

the farm, cattle, hay, and hogs alone maintamed 
the price level of the decade prior to 1892. Aver- 
age prices, moreover, do not fully indicate the 
small return which many farmers received. In'De- 
cember, 1891, for instance, the average value of a 
bushel of com was about forty cents, but in Ne- 
braska, on January 1, 1892, com brought only 
twenty-six cents. When, a few years later, com 
was worth, according to the statistics, just over 
twenty-one cents, it was literally cheaper to bum it 
in Kansas or Nebraska than to cart it to town, sell 
it, and buy coal with the money received; and this 
is just what hundreds of despairing farmers did. 
Even crop shortage did little to increase the price of 
the grain that was raised. When a drought seri- 
ously diminished the returns in Ohio, Indiana, and 
Michigan in 1895, the importation from States 
farther west prevented any rise in price. 

Prices dropped, but the interest on mortgages re- 
mained the same. One hundred and seventy-four 
bushels of wheat would pay the interest at 8 per 
cent on a $2000 mortgage in 1888, when the price of 
wheat was higher than it had been for ten years and 
higher than it was to be again for a dozen years. In 
1894 or 1895 when the price was hovering around 
fifty cents, it took 820 bushels to pay the same 



■^/ 



»c 



106 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

interest. Frequently the interest was higher than 8 
per cent, and outrageous commissions on renewals 
increased the burden of the farmer. The result 
was one foreclosure after another. The mortgage 
shark was identified as the servant of the "Wall 
Street Octopus," and between them there was little 
hope for the farmer. In Kansas, according to a 
contemporary investigator,' "the whole western 
third of the State was settled by a boom in farm 
lands. Multitudes of settlers took claims without 
means of their own, expecting to pay for the land 
from the immediate profits of farming. Multitudes 
of them mortgaged the land for improvements, and 
multitudes more expended the proceeds of mort- 
gages in living. When it was found that the pro- 
ceeds of farming in that part of the State were very 
uncertain, at best, the mortgages became due. And 
in many instances those who had been nominally 
owners remained upon the farms as tenants after 
foreclosure. These are but the natural eflFects in 
reaction from a tremendous boom.*' In eastern 
Kansas, where settlement was older, the pressure of 
hard times was withstood with less diflSculty. It 
was in western Kansas, by the way, that Populism 
had its strongest following; and, after the election 

» G. T. Fairduld, Pol, Sc, Q., vol. 11, p. 614. 



THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 107 

of 1892, a movement to separate the State into two 
commonwealths received serious consideration. 

Even more inexorable than the holder of the 
mortgage or his agent was the tax collector. It 
was easy to demonstrate that the farmer, with little 
or nothing but his land, his stock, and a meager out- 
fit of implements and furniture, all readily to be 
seen and assessed, paid taxes higher in proportion 
to his ability to pay than did the business man or 
the corporation. Although his equity in the land 
he owned might be much less than its assessed val- 
ue, he was not allowed to make any deduction for 
mortgages. The revenue of the Federal Govern- 
ment was raised wholly by indirect t^xes levied 
principally upon articles of common consumption; 
and the farmer and other people of small means 
paid an undue share of the burden in the form of 
higher prices demanded for commodities. 

Low prices for his produce, further depressed by 
the rapacity of the railroads and the other inter- 
mediaries between the producer and the consumer, 
mortgages with high interest rates, and an inequit- 
able system of taxation formed the burden of the 
farmer's complaint during the last two decades of 
the nineteenth century. These grievances and all 
sorts of remedies proposed for them were discussed 



108 THE AGBARIAN CBUSADE 

in fanners' gatherings, in agricultural weeklies^ 
even in city dailies, and ultimately in l^islative 
chambers. Investigations demonstrated that, even 
when reduced to a minimum, the Intimate grounds 
for complaint were extensive; and the resultant re- 
ports suggested a variety of remedies. Generally, 
however, popular sentiment swung around again to 
the tack it had taken in the late seventies: the real 
cure for all the evils was more money. Wall Street 
and the national banks could suck the blood from 
the western community because of their monopoly 
of the money supply. According to one irate edi- 
tor, "Few people are aware of the boundless ad- 
vantages that the national banks have under our 
present accursed system. They have, usurped the 
credit of the people and are fattening a thousand- 
fold annually from the unlimited resources at their 
command." Another editor wrote: 

We find the following printed card on our desk: 
"The last report of the Secretary of the Treasury 
shows the banks as loaning $1,970;022,687"! Four 
times the amount of money there is to loan. Four in- 
terests in every dollar! They are drawing from the 
people enough to run the National Government. How 
long will it take them to gather in all the money of the 
nation? This does not include the amounts loaned by 
state, private, and savings banks. Add to this the 



( 



THE PLIGHT OF THE FARMER 109 

billions of dollars of other loans and think if it is any 
wonder times are hard. Will the American people 
never wake up to the fact that they are being pauper- 
ized? Four people are paying interest upon each dol- 
lar you have in your pocket — if you have any. Wake 
up! Wake up! 

Whatever the ultimate effects of an inflated and \ 
consequently depreciated currency might be, the . \ 
debtor class, to which a large portion of the West- 1 
em farmers belonged, would obviously benefit im- 
mediately by the injection of large quantities of 
money into the circulating medium. The pur- 
chasing power of money would be lower; hence the 
farmer would receive more in dollars and cents and 
would be in a better position to pay his standing 
debts. Whether or not the rise in the prices of his / 
products would be offset or more than offset by the . 
increased prices which he would have to pay for the ' 
things he purchased would depend upon the rela- 
tive rate at which different commodities adjusted 
themselves to the new scale of money value. In 
the end, of course, other things being equal, there 
would be a return of old conditions ; but the f arniers 
did not look so far. ahead. Hence it was that less ^' 
attention was paid to taxation, to railroad rates 
and discriminations, to elevator companies, to , 




110 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

grain gamblers, or to corporations as such; and the 
main force of the agrarian movements from 1875 
onward was exerted, first for an increased paper 
currency and then for free silver. 



i^h^^i^k_- 



CHAPTER VIII 



THE farmers' alliance 



The hope of welding the farmers mto an organiza- 
tion which would enable them to present a united 
front to their enemies and to work together for the 
promotion of their interests — social, economic, 
and political — was too alluring to be allowed to 
die out with the decline of the Patrons of Husband- 
ry. Farmers who had experienced the benefits of , 
the Grange, even though they had deserted it in its 
hour of trial, were easily induced to join another or- 
ganization embodying all its essential features but 
proposing to avoid its mistakes. The conditioijs 
which brought about the rapid spread of the Grange 
in the seventies still prevailed; and as soon as the 
reaction from the Granger movement was spent, 
orders of farmers began to appear in various places 
and to spread rapidly throughout the South and 

West. This second movement for agricultural or- \ / 

y 

ganization differed from the first in that it sprang 

HI ^A-H^^^ 



4 



') 



t ' 
\ 



\ 



112 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

from the soil, as it were, and, like Topsy, *^just 
growed " instead of being deliberately planned and 
put into operation by a group of founders. 

A local farmers' dub or alliance was organized in 
1874 or 1875 in the frontier county of Lampasas, 
Texas, f or mutual protection against horse thieves 
and land sharks and for cooperation in the round- 
ing up of strayed stock and in the purchase of sup- 
plies. That it might accomplish its purposes more 
effectively, the club adopted a secret ritual of three 
degrees; and it is said that at first this contained 
a formula for catching horse thieves. Affiliated 
lodges were soon established in neighboring com- 
munities, and in 1878 a Grand State Alliance was 
organized. Some one connected with this move- 
ment must have been familiar with the Grange, for 
the Declaration of Purposes adopted by the State 
Alliance in 1880 is but a crude paraphrase of the 
declaration adopted by the earlier order at St. Louis 
in 1874. These promising beginnings were quickly 
wrecked by political dissension, particularly in con- 
nection with the Greenback movement, and the 
first State Alliance held its last meeting in 1879. 
In that year, however, a member of the order who 
removed to Poolville in Parker County, Texas, or- 
ganized there a distinctly non-partisan alliance. 



THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE US 

From this new center the movement spread more 
rapidly; a second Grand State Alliance was organ- 
ized; and the order grew with such rapidity that 
I by 1886 there were nearly three thousand local 
\ lodges in the State. The social aspect was prom- 
inent in the Alliance movement in Texas from the 
, b^inning. Women were admitted to full mem- 
! bership, and negroes were excluded. In 1882 the 
three d^rees of the ritual were combined into one 
so that all members might be on the same footing. 
The early minutes of the State Alliance indicate 
that the rounding up of estrays was the most im- 
portant practical feature of the order at that time, 
but in a few years this was overshadowed by co- 
operation. Trade agreements were made with 
dealers, joint stock stores and Alliance cotton- 
yards were established, and finally a state exchange 
was organized with a nominal capital of half a mil- 
lion dollars to handle the business of the members. 
All the diflSculties which the Grange had encoim- 
tered in its attempts at cooperation beset the Alli- 
ance ventures: dissension was spread by merchants 
and commission men fighting for their livelihood; 
mistakes were made by agents and directors; too 
much was attempted at once; and in a few years 
the house of cards tumbled to the ground. 

8 



114 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

While its business ventures were still promising, 
the Texas Alliance came near being wrecked once 
more on the shoals of politics. The state meeting 
S in August, 1886, adopted an elaborate set of ** De- 
^ mands, " which included higher taxation of lands 
held for speculative purposes, prohibition of alien 
land ownership, laws to "prevent the dealing in 
futures of all agricultural products, " full taxation 
of railroad property, "the rapid extinguishment of 
the public debt of the United States, by operating 
the mints to their fullest capacity in coining silver 
and gold, and the tendering of the same without 
discrimination to the public creditors,'' the issue of 
legal tender notes on a per capita basis and their 
substitution for bank notes, a national bureau of 
labor statistics, an interstate commerce law, and 
the abolition of the contract system of employing 
convicts. Provision was made for a committee of 
three to press these demands upon Congress and 
the State Legislature. At the close of the meeting, 
some of the members, fearing that the adoption of 
this report would lead to an attempt to establish 
a new political party, held another meeting and 
organized a rival State Alliance. 

Considerable confusion prevailed for a few 
months; the president and vice-president of the 



THE FARMEBS' ALLIANCE 115 

regular State Alliance resigned, and the whole order 
seemed on the verge of disruption. At this point 
there appeared on the stage the man who was des- 
tined not only to save the Alliance in Texas but also 
to take the lead in making it a national organiza- 
tion — C. W. Macune, the chairman of the execu- 
tive committee. Assuming the position of acting 
president, Macune called a special session of the 
State Alliance to meet in January, 1887. At this 
meeting the constitution was amended to include 
a declaration that it was the piupose of the order 
"to labor for the education of the agricultural 
classes in the science of economical government, in 
a strictly nonpartisan spirit"; and attention was 
then directed to a plan for ^Hhe organization of the 
cotton belt of America.'* The first step in this 
direction was taken in the same month when 
the Texas Alliance joined with the Farmers' Union 
of Louisiana and formed the National Farmers' 
Alliance and Cooperative Union of America. ^ 
Macune, who was elected president of the 

' The Farmers' Union was the outgrowth of an open farmers' club 
organized in Lincoln Parish, Loidsiana, in 1880. In 1885 this was 
transformed into a secret society with a ritual modeled after that of 
the Grange and with a constitution adapted from the constitution 
used by the Texas alliances. Before the year was over the order 
spread into the adjoining parishes and a state union was established. 



,• 



116 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

national body, at once sent organizers into most of 
') the Southern States; and local alliances, followed 
rapidly by state organization, appeared in State 
after State. When the next meeting was held in 
October, 1887, delegates were present from nine 
Southern States.' The "Demands" adopted at 
this meeting were very like those which had split 
the Texas Alliance in the preceding year, with the 
addition of sections calling for the reduction of the 
tariff to a revenue basis, a graduated income tax, 
promotion of industrial and agricultural education, 
restriction of immigration, and popular election of 
United States senators. 

As the Alliance spread into Arkansas and some of 
the adjoining States, it encountered another farm- 
ers' association of a very similar character and pur- 
.v( pose. The Agricultural Wheel, as it was known, 

! ^ originated in a local club in Prairie County, Arkan- 

»• 

' sas, in 1882, and soon expanded into a state- wide 
organization. After amalgamating with another 
agricultural order, known as the Brothers of Free- 
dom, the Wheel began to roll into the adjoining 
States. In 1886 delegates from Tennessee and 

* By December, 1888, it was claimed that there were 10,000 alli- 
ances in 16 States with a total membership of about 400,000. It was 
evident that the organization of the farmers of the cotton belt was 
rapidly being consummated. 



THE FARMERS* ALLIANCE (m/ 

Kentucky attended the meeting of the Arkansas 
State Wheel and took part in the organization of 
the National Agricultural Wheel.' When the Na- 
tional Wheel held its first annual meeting in No- 
vember, 1887, eight state organizations had been 
established, all in the Southwest, with a total mem- 
bership of half a million. 

With two great orders of farmers expanding in 
much the same territory and having practically 
identical objects, the desirability of union was ob- 
vious. The subject was discussed at meetings of 
both bodies, and committees of conference were 
appointed. Both organizations finally convened ' 
in December, 1888, at Meridian, Mississippi, and 
appointed a joint committee to work out the de- 
tails of amalgamation. The outcome was a new con- 
stitution, which was accepted by each body acting 
separately and was finally ratified by the state or- 
ganizations. The combined order was to be known , 
as the Farmers' and Laborers' Union of America. ^ 

While this development had been going on in the j/ 
South, another movement, somewhat diflFerent in 
character and quite independent in origin, had been 

X Some difficulty was occasioned at this meeting by the question of 
admitting negroes to the order, but this was finally settled by making 
provision for separate lodges for colored members. 



118 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

\ launched by the farmers of the Northwest. The 
founder of the National Farmers' Alliance, or the 
Northwestern Alliance, as it was called to distin- 
guish it from the Southern organization, was Mil- 
ton George, editor of the Western Rural of Chicago, 
who had been instrumental in organizing a local 
alUance in Cook County. This Alliance began issu- 
ing charters to other locals, and in October, 1880, at 
the dose of a convention in Chicago, attended by 
'^five hundred, representing alliances, granges, 
farmers' clubs, etc., " a national organization was 
formed. The constitution adopted at this time de- 
clared the object of the order to be "to unite the 
farmers of the United States for their protection 
against class legislation, and the encroachments of 
concentrated capital and the tyranny of monopoly; 
... to oppose, in our respective poUtical parties, 
the election of any candidate to oflSce, state or na- 
tional, who is not thoroughly in sympathy with the 
farmers' interests; to demand that the existing po- 
litical parties shall nominate farmers, or those who 
are in sympathy with them, for all offices within 
the gift of the people, and to do everything in a 
legitimate manner that may serve to benefit the 
producer." The specific measures for which the 
promoters of the Northwestern AUiance intended 



THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE 119 

to work were set forth in a platform adopted at the 
second annual meeting in Chicago, October 5» 1881, 
which demanded: equal taxation of all property, 
including deduction of the amount of mortgages 
from assessments of mortgaged property; ^'a just 
income tax"; reduction of salaries of officials and 
their election instead of appointment, so far as 
practicable; regulation of interstate commerce; re- 
form of the patent laws; and prevention of the 
adulteration of food. '^The combination and con- 
solidation of railroad capital ... in the main- 
tenance of an oppressive and tyrannical transpor- 
tation system" was particularly denounced, and 
the farmers of the country were called upon to or- 
ganize "for systematic and persistent action" for 
"the emancipation of the people from this terrible 
oppression." 

The Northwestern Alliance did not attempt co- 
operation in business so extensively as did its 
Southern contemporaries, but a number of Alliance 
grain elevators were established in Minnesota and 
Dakota, co5perative creameries flourished in Illi- 
nois, and many of the alliances appointed agents to 
handle produce and purchase supplies for the mem- 
bers. It was in the field of poUtics, however, that 
the activity of the order was most notable. The 



L » 



120 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

, methods by which the fanners of the Northwest at- 
tempted to use their organizations for political ends 
are well illustrated by the resolutions adopted at 
the annual meeting of the Minnesota State Alliance 
in 1886 which declared that "the Alliance, while 
not a partisan association, is political in the sense 
that it seeks to correct the evils of misgovemment 
through the ballot-box,** and called upon all the 
producers of the State "to unite with us at the 
ballot-box next November to secure a legislature 
that will work in the interests of the many against 
the exactions of the few. " The specific demands 
included state regulation of railroads, free coinage 
of silver, reduction of the tariflf to a revenue basis, 
revision of the patent laws, high taxation of oleo- 
inargarine, and reduction of the legal rate of inter- 
est from 10 to 8 per cent. The secretary was di- 
rected to forward copies of these resolutions to fed- 
eral and state oflScers and to the delegation of the 
State in Congress; and the members of local al- 
liances were "urged to submit this platform of 
principles to every candidate for the legislature in 
their respective districts, and to vote as a imit 
against every man who refuses to publicly sub- 
scribe his name to the same and pledge himself, if 
elected, to live up to it." 



THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE Wl 

The resolutions adopted by the National Alli- 
ance in 1887 show that the poUtieal purposes of the 
order had become considerably more comprehen- 
sive than they were when it was getting under way 
in 1881. First place was now given to a plank 
favoring the free coinage of silver and the issuance 
of "all paper money direct to the people." The' 
demand for railroad regulation was accompanied 
by a statement that "the ultimate solution of the 
transportation problem may be found in the owner- 
ship and operation by the Government of one or 
more transcontinental Unes"; and the immediate 
acquisition of the Union Pacific, then in finan- 
cial difficidties, was suggested. Other resolutions 
called for government ownership and operation of 
the telegraph, improvement of waterways, restric- 
tion of the liquor traflSc, industrial education in the 
public schools, restoration of agricultural colleges 
"to the high purpose of their creation," and popu- 
lar election of Senators. The national body does 
not appear to have attempted, at this time, to force 
its platform upon candidates for oflSce; but it urged 
"farmers throughout the country to aid in the work 
of immediate organization, that we may act in con- 
cert for our own and the common good." 

The culmination of this general movement for ' 



W2 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the organization of the farmers of the country came 
'>: ' / in 1889 and 1890. The Farmers' and Laborers' 

' Union and the Northwestern Alliance met at St. 

'Louis on December 3, 1889. The meeting of the 
Southern organization, which was renamed the 
National Farmers' Alliance and Lidustrial Union, 
was attended by about a hundred delegates repre- 
senting Indiana, Kansas, and every Southern State 
from Maryland to Texas, with the exception of 
West Virginia. The purpose of the two orders in 
holding their meetings at the same time and place 
was obviously to effect some sort of union, and 
conmiittees of conference were at once appointed. 
Difficulties soon confronted these committees : the 
Southern Alliance wanted to effect a complete 
merger but insisted upon retention of the secret 
features and the exclusion of negroes, at least from 

ythe national body; the Northwestern Alliance 

X preferred a federation in which each organiza- 

^ tion might retain its identity. Arrangements were 

finally made for future conferences to effect f edera- 

1 tion but nothing came of them. The real obstacles 
seem to have been differences of policy with refer- 
ence to political activity and a survival of sectional 
feeling. 

With the failure of the movement for union, the 



THE FARMERS' ALLIANCE 128 

Southern Alliance began active work in the North- 
. em States; and when the Supreme Council, as the 
national body was now called, held its next meeting 
^ at Ocala, Florida, in December, 1890, delegates 
were present from state alliances of seven Northern 
and Western States, in addition to those repre- 
sented at the St. Louis meeting. The Farmers' 
Mutual Benefit Association, a secret order with 
about two hundred thousand members, had a com- 
mittee in attendance at this meeting, and the Col- 
\ored Farmers' Alliance, which had been founded in 
s^^ ' Texas in 1886 and claimed a membership of over a 
million, held its national meeting at the same time 
and place. Plans were formulated for a federation 
of these three bodies, and of such other farmers' 
and laborers' associations as might join with them, 
to the end that all might work unitedly for legisla- 
tion in the interests of the indui^ial classes. 

Signs of approaching dissolution of the AlUance 
movement were already apparent at the Ocala 
meeting. The finances of the Southern Alliance 
had been so badly managed that there was a deficit 
of about $6000 in the treasury of the Supreme 
Council. This was due in part to reckless expendi- 
ture and in part to difficulties in collecting dues 
from the state organizations. Discord had arisen, 



124 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

moreover, from the political campaign of 1890, and 
an investigating committee expressed its disap- 
proval of the actions of the oflScers in connection 
with a senatorial contest in Georgia. The decline 
of the Southern AlUance after 1890 was even more 
rapid than that of the Grange had been. The 
failure of many of the cooperative ventures con- 
tributed to this decline; but complications and dis- 
sensions resulting from the establishment of a new 
political party which took over the AUiance plat- 
form, were principally responsible. The North- 
western AUiance continued for a few years, prac- 
tically as an adjunct to the new party but it, too, 
lost rapidly in membership and influence. With 
the year 1890 interest shifts from social to political 
organization, from Alliances to Populism. 



/ ■•-/ 



CHAPTER IX 



THB PXK}PLiX:'s PARTT LAUNCHED 



[ AxiiTANCES, wheds, leagues — all the agrarian or- 
ganizations which multiplied during the eighties — 

• 

gave tangible form to the underlying unrest created 
by the economic conditions of that superficially 
prosperous decade. Only slowly, however, did 
there develop a feeling that a new political par- 
ty was necessary in order to apply the remedies 
which, it was believed, would cure some if not 
all the ills of the agricultural class. Old party 
ties were still strong. Only with reluctance could 
the Republican or Democrat of long standing 
bring himself to depart from the familiar fold. 
Then, too, the recent ignominious failures of the 
Greenback party might well cool the ardor of all 
but the most sanguine advocates of a third par- 
ty movement. Among the leaders of the agra- 
rian organizations were many, moreover, who fore- 
saw that to become involved in partisan politics 

125 



126 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

could mean nothing less than the defeat of all 
their original purposes. 

One disappointment after another, however, 
made it apparent that little was to be expected 
from the Republican or the Democratic party. 
Trust in individual politicians proved equally vain, 
since promises easily made during a hot campaign 
were as easily forgotten after the battle was over. 
One speaker before a state convention of the North- 
, west Alliance put into words what many were 
thinking: "There may be some contingencies 
when you may have to act politically. If other 
parties will not nominate men friendly to your in- 
terest, then your influence will have to be felt in 
some way or you may as well disband. If all par- 
ties nominate your enemies, then put some of your 
own friends into the race and then stand by them 
as a Christian stands by his reUgion." In other 
words, if nothing was to be gained by scattering 
votes among the candidates of the old parties,, in- 
dependent action remained the only course. Hence 
it was that the late eighties saw the beginnings of 
another party of protest, dominated by the farm- 
ers and so formidable as to cause the machine poli- 
ticians to realize that a new force was abroad in 
the land. 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 1«7 

After the Greenback party lost the place it had 
for a fleeting moment obtained, labor once more 
essayed the r61e of a third party. In 1886, for in- 
stance, the Elnights of Labor and the trades unions, 
for once cooperating harmoniously, joined forces 
locally with the moribund Greenbackers and with 
farmers' organizations and won notable successes 
at the polls in various parts of the Union, particu- 
larly in the Middle Atlantic and Western States. 
Emboldened by such victories, the discontented 
farmers were induced to cast in their lot with labor; 
and for the next few years, the nation saw the man- 
ifestoes of a party which combined the demands of 
labor and agriculture in platforms constructed not 
unlike a crazy-quilt, with Henry George, James 
Buchanan, and Alson J. Streeter presiding at the 
sewing-bee and attempting to fit into the patch- 
work the diverse and frequently clashing shades of 
opinion represented in the party. Li 1888, Street- 
er, ex-president of the Northwestern AJliance, was 
nominated for President on the Union Labor ticket 
and received 146,935 votes in 27 of the 38 States. 
Despite its name and some support from the East- 
em workers, the new party was predominantly 
Western : more than half of its total vote was polled 
in Kansas, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas. In the 



128 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

local elections of 1889 and 1890 the party still ap- 
peared but was obviously passing off the stage to 
make way for a greater attraction. 

The meager vote for Streeter in 1888 demon- 
strated that the organized farmers were yet far 
from accepting the idea of separate political action. 
President Macune of the Southern Alliance prob- 
ably voiced the sentiments of most of that order 
when he said in his address to the delegates at 
Shreveport in 1887 : "Let the Alliance be a business 
organization for business purposes, and as isuch, 
necessarily secret, and as secret, necessarily non- 
political."' Even the Northwestern Alliance had 
given no sign of official approval to the poUtical 
party in which so many of its own members played 
a conspicuous part. 

But after the election of 1888, those who had 
continued to put their trust in non-poUtical organ- 
izations gradually awoke to the fact that neither 
fulminations against transportation abuses, mo- 
nopolies, and the protective tariff, nor the lobbying 
of the Southern Alliance in Washington had pro- 
duced reforms. Even Macune was moved to say at 

'At the next annual meeting, in December, 1888, no change in 
policy was enunciated: the plan for a national organ, unanimously 
adopted by the Alliance, provided that it should be " strictly non-par- 
tisan in politics and non-sectarian in religion." 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 129 

the St. Louis session in December, 1889: "We have 
reached a period in the history of our Government 
when confidence in our poUtical leaders and great; 
political organizations is almost destroyed, and es- 
trangement between them and the people is becom- 
ing more manifest every day.* Yet the formation of 
a new party under the auspices of the AlUance was 
probably not contemplated at this time, except 
possibly as a last resort, for the AlKance agreed to 
"support for office only such men as can be de- 
pended upon to enact these principles into statute 
laws, uninfluenced by party caucus.'* Althougn 
the demands framed at this St. Louis convention 
read like a party platform and, indeed, became th^ 
basis of the platform of the People's Party in 1892, A 
they were little more than a restatement of earli-t..^ 
er programs put forth by the Alliance and the 
Wheel. They called for the substitution of green- 
backs for national bank notes, laws to "prevent the ^ 
dealing in futures of all agricultural and mechanical / 
productions,'' free and unlimited coinage of silver, / 
prohibition of alien ownership of land, reclamation / 
from the railroads of lands held by them in excess/ 
of actual needs, reduction and equalization of taxa- 
tion, the issue of fractional paper currency for use 
in the mails, and, finally, government ownershipV^ 



130 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

] and operation of the means of communication and 
[ transportation. 

The real contribution which this meeting made 
to the agrarian movement was contained in the re- 
port of the committee on the monetary system, of ^ 
which C. W. Macune Vas chairman. This was the ^ 
famous sub-treasury scheme, soon to become the 
paramount issue with th^ Alliance and the Popu- 
lists in the South and in some parts of the West. 
The committee proposed "that the system of using 
certain banks as United States depositories be abol- 
ished, and in place of said system, establish in every 
county in each of the States that offers for sale dur- 
ing the one year $500,000 worth of farm products 
— including wheat, com, oats, barley, rye, rice, 
tobacco, cotton, wool, and sugar, all together — 
a sub-treasury oflSce.'* In connection with this 
oflSce there were to be warehouses or elevators in 
which the farmers might deposit their crops, receiv- 

' ing a certificate of the deposit showing the amoimt 
and quality, and a loan of United States legal tender 
paper equal to eighty per cent of the local ciurent 
value of the products deposited. The interest on 
this loan was to be at the rate of one per cent per 
annum; and the farmer, or the person to whom he 
might sell his certificate, was to be allowed one year 



THE PEOPLE^S PARTY LAUNCHED 181 

iin which to redeem the property; otherwise it 
would be sold at public auction for the satisfaction 
of the debt. This project was expected to benefit 
j/the farmers in two ways: it would increase and 
make flexible the volume of currency in circulation; 
iand it would enable them to hold their crops in 
'anticipation of a rise in price. 

The Northwestern Alliance also hesitated to 
play the rdle of a third party, but it adopted a pro- 
gram which was virtually a party platform. In 
place of the sub-treasury scheme as a means of in- 
creasing the volume of currency in circulation and 
at the same time enabling the farmer to borrow 
money at low rates of interest, this organization 
favored the establishment of a land loan bureau 
operated by the Government. Legal tender curren- 
cy to the amount of $100,000,000 or more if neces- 
sary, was to be placed at the disposal of this bureau 
for loans upon the security of agricultiu'al land in 
amounts not to exceed one-half the value of the land 
and at an interest rate of two per cent per annum. 
These loans might run for twenty years but were to 
be payable at any time at the option of the borrower. 

With two strong organizations assuming all the 
fimctions of political parties, except the nomina- 
tion of candidates, the stage was set in 1890 for a 






132 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

drama of unusual interest. One scene was laid in 
Washington, where in the House and Senate and in 
the lobbies the sub-treasury scheme was aired and 
argued. Lending their strength to the men from 
the mining States, the Alliance men aided the pas- 
sage of the Silver Purchase Act, the nearest ap- 
proach to free silver which Congress could be in- 
duced to make. By the familiar practice of "log- 
rolling, " the silverites prevented the passage of the 
McKinley tariff bill until the manufacturers of the 
East were willing to yield in part their objections 
to silver legislation. But both the tariff and the 
silver bill seemed to the angry farmers of the West 
mere bones thrown to the dog under the table. 
They had demanded free silver and had secured a 
mere increase in the amount to be purchased; they 
had called for a downward revision of the duties 
upon manufactured products and had been given 
more or less meaningless "protection " of their farm 
produce; they had insisted upon adequate control 
of the trusts and had been presented with the Sher- 
man Act, a law which might or might not curb the 
monopolies under which they believed themselves 
crushed. All the imrest which had been gathering 
during the previous decade, all the venom which 
had been distilled by fourteen cent com and ten 



f f 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 133 

per cent interest, all the blind striving to frustrate / 
the industrial consolidation which the farmer did | 
not understand but feared and hated, found expres- \ 
sion in the political campaign of 1890. ^ 

' The Alliance suited its political activities to local 
necessities. In many of the Southern States, no- 
tably Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, Alliance 
men took possession of the Democratic conventions 
and forced both the incorporation of their demands 
into the platforms and the nomination of candi- 
dates who agreed to support those demands. The 
result was the control of the legislatures of five 
Southern States by members or supporters of the 
order and the election of three governors, one 
United States Senator, and forty-four Congress- 
men who championed the principles of the Alliance. 
Li the West the Alliance worked by itself and, in- 
stead of dominating an old party, created a new 
one. It is true that the order did not formally be- 
come a political party; but its officers took the lead 
in organizing People's, Independent, or Industrial 
parties in the different States, the membership of 
which was nearly identical with that of the Alli- 
ance. Nor was the farmer alone in his efforts. 
Throughout the whole country the prices of manu- 
factured articles had suddenly risen, and popular 



/ 



'A 



134 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

opinion, fastening upon the McKinley tariff as the 
cause, manifested itself in a widespread desire to 
punish the Republican party. 

The events of 1890 constituted not only a politi- 
cal revolt but a social upheaval in the Westi No- 
where was the overturn more complete than in 
IQtnsas. If the West in general was imeasy, Kan- 
sas was in the throes of a mighty convulsion; it was 
swept as by the combination of a tornado and a 
prairie fire. As a sympathetic commentator of 
later days puts it, "It was a religious revival, a 
crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue 
of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the 
spirit gave him utterance.'"' All over the State, 
meetings were held in schoolhouses, churches, and 
public halls. Alliance picnics were all-day exposi- 
tions of the doctrines of the People's Party. Up 
and down the State, and from Kansas City to 
Sharon Springs, Mary Elizabeth Lease, "Sockless" 
Jerry Simpson, Anna L. Diggs, William A. Peffer, 
Cyrus Corning, and twice a score more, were in 
constant demand for lectures, while lesser hghts il- 
lumined the dark places when the stars of the first 
magnitude were scintillating elsewhere. 

' Elizabeth N. Barr, The PopulUt Uprising, in William £. Con- 
nelly's Standard History of Kansas andKansans, vol. ii, p. 1148. 



( 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 135 

Mrs. Lease, who is reported to have made 160 
speeches in the summer and autumn of 1890, was a 
curiosity in American politics. Of Trish birth and 
New York upbringing, she went to Kansas and, be- 
fore she was twenty years old, married Charles L. 
Lease. Twelve years later she was admitted to the 
bar. At the time of the campaign of 1890 she was 
a tall, mannish-looking, but not imattractive wom- 
an of thirty-seven years, the mother of four chil- 
dren. She was characterized by her friends as re- 
fined, magnetic, and witty; by her enemies of the 
Republican party as a hard, unlovely shrew. The 
hostile press made the most of popular prejudice 
against a woman stump speaker and attempted by 
ridicule and invective to drive her from the stage. 
But Mrs. Lease continued to talk. She it was who 
told the Kansas farmers that what they needed was 
to "raise less com and more hell! " 

Wall Street owns the country [she proclaimed]. It 
is no longer a government of the people, by the people, 
and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by 
Wall Street, and for Wall Street. . . . Money rules, 
and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws 
are the output of a system that clothes rascals in robes 
and honesty in rags. The parties lie to us, and the 
political speakers mislead us. We were told two years 
ago to go to work and raise a big crop and that was all 



1S6 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; 
the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we 
raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came 
of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef, 
and no price at all for butter and eggs — that's what 
came of it. . . . The main question is the money 
question. . . . We want money, land, and transpor- 
tation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, 
and we want the power to make loans directly from the 
Government. We want the accursed foreclosure sys- 
tem wiped out. Land equal to a tract 30 miles wide 
and 90 miles long has been foreclosed and bought in by 
loan companies of Kansas in a year. . . . The people 
are at bay, and the blood-hounds of money who have 
dogged us thus far beware! 

A typical feature of this campaign in Kansas was 
the contest between Jerry Simpson and Colonel 
James R. Hallowell for a seat in Congress. Simp- 
son nicknamed his fastidious opponent ^'Prince 
Hal" and pointed to his silk stockings as an evi- 
dence of aristocracy. Young Victor Murdock, 
then a cub reporter, promptly wrote a story to thei 
effect that Simpson himself wore no socks at all. 
Sockless Jerry," "Sockless Simpson," and then 
Sockless Socrates" were sobriquets then and' 
thereafter applied to the stalwart Populist. Simp- 
son was at this time forty-eight years old, a man 
with a long, square-jawed face, his skin tanned by 



« 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 137 

exposure on shipboard, in the army, and on the 
farm, and his mustache cut in a straight line over a 
large straight mouth. He wore clerical eyeglasses 
and imclerical clothes. His opponents called him 
clownish; his friends declared him Lincolnesque. 
Failing to make headway against him by ridicule, 
the Republicans arranged a series of joint debates 
between the candidates; but the audience at the 
first meeting was so obviously partial to Simpson 
that Hallowell refused to meet him again. The sup- 
porters of the "sockless" statesman, though less 
influential and less prosperous than those of Hallo- 
well, proved more numerous and triumphantly elect- 
ed him to Congress. Li Washington he acquitted 
himself creditably and was perhaps disappointingly 
conventional in speech and attire. 

The outcome of this misery, disgust, anger, and 
hatred on the part of the people of Kansas focused 
by shrewd common sense and rank demagogism, 
was the election of five Populist Congressmen and 
a large Populist majority in the lower house of 
the state legislature; the Republican state offi- 
cers were elected by greatly reduced majorities. 
In Nebraska, the People*s Independent party ob- 
tained a majority of the members of the legislature 
and reduced the Republican party to third place in 



138 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the vote for governor, the victory going to the 
Democrats by a very small plurality. The South 
Dakota Independent party, with the president of 
the state Alliance as its standard bearer, was un- 
able to defeat the Republican candidates for state 
offices but obtained the balance of power in the 
legislature. In Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota, 
the new party movement manifested considerable 

* 

strength, but, with the exception of one Alliance 
Congressman from Minnesota and a number of 
l^islators, the fruits of its activity were gathered 
by the Democrats. 

Among the results of the new party movements 
in the Western States in 1890 should be included 
the election of two United States Senators, neither 
of whom was a farmer, although both were ardent 
advocates of the farmers' cause. In South Da- 
kota, where no one of the three parties had a major- 
ity in the legislature, the Reverend James H. Kyle, 
the Independent candidate, was elected to the 
United State Senate, when, after thirty-nine bal- 
lots, the Democrats gave hifn their votes. Kyle, 
who was only thirty-seven years old at this time, 
was a Congregational minister, a graduate of Ober- 
lin College and of Alleghany Theological Seminary. 
He had held pastorates in Colorado and South 



THE PEOPLE^S PARTY LAUNCHED 139 

Dakota, and at the time of his election was finan- 
cial agent for Yankton College. A radical Fourth 
of July oration which he delivered at Aberdeen 
brought him into favor with the Alliance, and he 
was elected to the state senate on the Independent 
ticket in 1890. Prior to this election Kyle had 
been a Republican. 

The other senatorial victory was gained in Kan- 
sas, where the choice fell on WiUiam A. Peffer, 
whose long whiskers made him a favorite object of 
ridicule and caricature in Eastern papers. He was 
born in Pennsylvania in 1831, and as a young man 
had gone to California during the gold boom. Re- 
turning after two years with a considerable sum of 
money, he engaged in farming first in Indiana and 
then in Missouri. When the Civil War began, his 
avowed Unionist sentiments got him into trouble; 
and in 1862 he moved to Illinois, where after a few 
months he enlisted in the army. At the close of 
the war he settled in Tennessee and began the 
practice of law, which he had been studying at in- 
tervals for a number of years. He removed in 
1870 to Kansas, where he played some part in poli- 
tics as a Republican, was elected to the state sen- 
ate, and served as a delegate to the national con- 
vention of 1880. After a number of newspaper 



/ 



140 ' THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

ventures he became the editor of the Kansas Farm- 
er of Topeka in 1880 and continued in that position 
until he was elected to the United States Senate. 
He was a member of the Knights of Labor and was 
an ardent prohibitionist and, above all, an advocate 
of currency inflation. 

/ After the elections of November, 1890, came 
^definite action in the direction of forming a new 

/national party. The Citizens' Alliance, a secret 
political organization of members of the Southern 
Alliance, held a convention with the Knights of La- 
bor at Cincinnati on May 19, 1891. By that time 
the tide of sentiment in favor of a new party was 
running strong. Some fourteen hundred delegates, 
a majority of whom were from the five States of 
Ohio, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, and Nebraska, at- 
tended the convention and provided for ^commit- 
tee to make arrangements, in conjunction with 
other reform organizations if possible, for a con- 
vention of the party to nominate candidates for the 
presidential election of 1892. To those who were 
anxious to have something done immediately the 
process of preparing the ground for a new third 
party seemed long and laborious. Seen in its 
proper perspective, the movement now appears to 
have been as swift as it was inevitable. Once 



THE PEOPLE'S PARTY LAUNCHED 141^t/ 

more, and with greater unanimity than ever before, | 
the farmers, especially in the West, threw aside / 

their old party allegiance to fight for the things / 

which they deemed not only essential to their own ( , 
weKare but beneficial to the whole country. Some ! 

aid, it is true, was brought by labor, some by the / • 
mining communities of the moimtain region, some 

by various reform organizations ; but the movement / / 

as a whole was distinctly and essentially agrarian. /' ^ 



CHAPTER X 

THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OP 1892 

The advent of the Populists as a full-fledged party 
in the domain of national politics took place at 
Omaha in July, 1892. Nearly thirteen hundred 
delegates from all parts of the Union flocked to 
the convention to take part in the selection of 
candidates for President and Vice-President and 
to adopt a platform for the new party. The "De- 
mands" of the Alliances supplied the material 
from which was constructed a platform character- 
ized by one imsympathetic observer as "that fu- 
rious and hysterical arraignment of the present 
times, that incoherent intermingling of Jeremiah 
and Bellamy. " The document opened with a gen- 
eral condemnation of national conditions and a bit- 
ter denunciation of the old parties for permitting 
"the existing dreadful conditions to develop with- 
out serious effort to prevent or restrain them." 
Then followed three declarations: "that the union 

142 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 148 _ * 

of the labor forces of the United States this day 
consummated shall be permanent and perpetual " ; 
that "wealth belongs to him who creates it, and -i,^^ 
every dollar taken from industry without an equiv- 
alent is robbery'*; and "that the time has come ' 
when the railroad corporations will either own ^ 
the people or the people must own the railroads/' ^ 
Next came the demands. Heading these were the- 
monetary planks : " a national currency, safe, sound, 
and flexible, issued by the general Government 
only, a full legal tender for all debts, ** with the sub- 
treasury system of loans **or a better system; free 
and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the pres- i 
ent l^al ratio of sixteen to one"; and an increase \^ 
in the circulating medium until. there should be 
not less than $50 per capita. With demands for a 
graduated income tax, for honesty and economy in 
governmental expenditures, and for postal savings * 
banks, the financial part of the platform was com- 
plete. The usual plank declaring for government 
ownership and control of railroads and telegraphs 
now included the telephone systems as well, and the 
land plank opposed alien ownership and demanded 
the return of lands held by corporations in excess of 
their actual needs. Other resolutions, adopted but 
not included in the platform, expressed sympathy 



144 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

with labor's demands for shorter hours, condemned 
the use of Pinkerton detectives in labor strife, and 
favored greater restriction of immigration, the in- 
itiative and referendum, direct election of United 
States senators, and one term for the President and 
Vice-President. 

The platform, according to a news dispatch of 
the time, was "received with tremendous enthusi- 
asm . . . and was read and adopted almost be- 
fore the people knew it was read. Instantly there 
was enacted the mightiest scene ever witnessed by 
the human race. Fifteen thousand people yelled, 
shrieked, threw papers, hats, fans, and parasols, 
gathered up banners, mounted shoulders. Mrs. 
Lease's little girl was mounted on Dr. Fish's 
shoulders — he on a table on the high platform. 
The two bands were sWamped with noise. . . . 
Five minutes passed, ten minutes, twenty, still the 
noise and hurrahs poured from hoarse throats." 
After forty minutes the demonstration died out 
and the convention was ready to proceed with the 
nomination of a presidential candidate. 

No such unanimity marked this further proce- 
dure, however. Just before the convention the 
leaders of the People's Party had thrown the old 
parties into consternation by announcing that 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 145 

Judge Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, would be 
offered the nomination. Judge Gresham, a Re- 
publican with a long and honorable public record, 
had been urged upon the Republican party in 1884 
and 1888, and " Anti-Monopolists *' had considered 
him with favor on account of his opinions and de- 
cisions regarding the operation and control of rail- 
roads. Just after the adoption of the platform a 
telegram from the judge announced that he would 
accept a imanimous nomination. Since imanimity 
was unobtainable, however, his name was with- 
drawn later in the day. 

This left the field to General James B. Weaver of 
Iowa and Senator James H. Kyle of South Dakota. 
Weaver represented the more conservative of the 
Populists, the old Alliance men. His rival had the 
support of the most radical element as well as that 
of the silver men from the mountain States. The 
silverites were not inclined to insist upon their man, 
however, declaring that, if the platform contained 
the silver plank, they would carry their States for 
whatever candidate might be chosen. The old 
campaigner proved the stronger, and he was nom- 
inated with General James G. Field of Virginia 
for Vice-President. Unprejudiced observers viewed 
Wea ver^s n omination as a tactical error on the part 



10 



146 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

of the Populist leaders: "Mr. Weaver has be- 
longed to the group of third-party *come-outers' 
for so many years that his name is not one to 
conjure with in either of the old camps; . . . his 
name suggests too strongly the abortive third- 
party movements of the past to excite much hope 
or enthusiasm. He is not exactly the sort of a 
Moses who can frighten Pharaoh into fits or bring 
convincing plagues upon the monopolistic oppres- 
sors of Israel. The wicked politicians of the Re- 
publican and Democratic parties breathed easier 
and ate with better appetites when the Gresham 
bogie disappeared and they found their familiar 
old enemy. General Weaver, in the lead of the 
People's movement. " 

It may be suspected, however, that even with 
Weaver at its head this party, which claimed to 
control from two to three million votes, and which 
expected to draw heavily from the discontented 
ranks of the old-Une organizations, was not viewed 
with absolute equanimity by the campaign man- 
agers of Cleveland and of Harrison. Some little evi- 
dence of the perturbation appeared in the equivo- 
cal attitude of both the old parties with respect 
to the silver question. Said the Democratic plat- 
form : " We hold to the use of both gold and silver 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 147 

as the standard money of the country, and to the 
coinage of both gold and silver without discrimi- 
nation against either metal or charge for mintage." 
The rival RepubUcan platform declared that "the 
American people, from tradition and interest, favor 
bimetallism, and the Republican party demands the 
use of both gold and silver as standard money." 
Each party declared for steps to obtain an interna- 
tional agreement on the question. The Republi- 
cans attempted to throw a sop to the labor vote by 
favoring restriction of immigration and laws for the 
protection of employees in dangerous occupations, 
and to the farmer by pronouncements against 
trusts, for extended postal service — particularly 
in rural districts — and for the reclamation and 
sale of arid lands to settlers. The Democrats 
went even further and demanded the return of 
" nearly one himdred million acres of valuable land " 
then held by "corporations and syndicates, alien 
and domestic. " 

The directors of the PopuHst campaign proved to 
be no mean political strategists. General Weaver 
himself toured the coimtry, accompanied by Gen- 
eral Field when he was in the South and by Mrs. 
Lease when he went to the Pacific coast. Numer- 
ous other men and women addressed the thousands 



148 THE AGRARIAN CRITSADE 

who attended the meetings, great and small, all 
over the eomitry. One unique feature of the 
Populist campaign on the Pacific coast was the sing- 
ing of James G. Clark's People^s Battle-Hymn, and 
other songs expressing the hope and fears of labor 
in the field and factory. Everywhere it was the 
policy of the new party to enlist the assistance of 
the weaker of the old parties. In the South, the 
Populists, as a rule, arrayed themselves with the 
Republicans against the old Democracy. This pro- 
voked every device of ridicule, class prejudice, and 
scorn, which the dominant party could bring to 
bear to dissuade former Democrats from voting 
the People's ticket. One Louisiana paper uttered 
this warning: 

Oily-tongued orators, in many cases the paid agents 
of the Republican party, have for months been circu- 
lating among the unsophisticated and more credulous 
classes, preaching their heresies and teaching the peo- 
ple that if Weaver is elected president, money may be 
had for the asking, transportation on the railroad 
trains will be practically free, the laboring man will be 
transferred from his present position and placed upon a 
throne of power, while lakes filled with molasses, whose 
shores are fringed with buckwheat cakes, and islands of 
Jersey butter rising here and there above the surface, 
will be a concomitant of every farm. The ** f orty-acres- 
and-a-mule" promises of the reconstruction era pale 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OF 1892 149 

into insignificance beside the glowing pictures of pros- 
perity promised by the average Populist orator to 
those who support Weaver. 

The Pensacola Address of the Populist nominees 
on September 17, 1892, which served as a joint let- 
ter of acceptance, was evidently issued at that 
place and time partly for the purpose of influencing 
such voters as might be won over by emphasizing 
the imquestioned economic distress of most South- 
em farmers. If the new party could substantiate 
the charges that both old parties were the tools of 
monopoly and Wall Street, it might insert the 
wedge which would eventually split the "solid 
South. " Even before the Pensacola Address^ the 
state elections in Alabama and Arkansas demon- 
strated that cooperation of Republicans with Popu- 
lists was not an idle dream. But, although fusion 
was effected on state tickets in several States in the 
November elections, the outcome was the choice of 
Cleveland electors throughout the South. 

As the Populists tried in the South to win over 
the Republicans, so in the North and more espe- 
cially the West they sought to control the Demo- 
cratic vote either by fusion or absorption. The 
effort was so successful that in O)lorado, Idaho» 
Kansas, Nevada, and North Dakota, the new party 



-1 



150 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

swept the field with the assistance of the Demo- 
crats. In South Dakota and Nebraska, where 
there was no fusion, the Democratic vote was 
negligible and the Popuhsts ran a close second to 
the Republicans. 

That the tide of agrarianism was gradually flow- 
ing westward as the frontier advanced is apparent 
from the election returns in the States bordering on 
the upper Mississippi. Iowa and Missouri, where 
the Alliance had been strong, experienced none of 
the landslide which swept out the Republicans in 
States further west. In Minnesota the Populists, 
with a ticket headed by the veteran Donnelly, ran 
a poor third in the state election, and the entire 
Harrison electoral ticket was victorious in spite 
of the endorsement of four Populist candidates by 
the Democrats. In the northwestern part of the 
State, however, the new party was strong enough 
to elect a Congressman over candidates of both 
the old parties. In no Northern State east of 
the Mississippi were the Populists able to make a 
strong showing; but in Illinois, the success of John 
P. Altgeld, the Democratic candidate for governor, 
was due largely to his advocacy of many of the 
measures demanded by the People's party, particu- 
larly those relating to labor, and to the support 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OP 1892 151 

which he received from the elements which might 
have been expected to aline themselves with the 
Populists. On the Pacific coast, despite the musi- 
cal campaign of Clark, Mrs. Lease, and Weaver, • 
California proved deaf to the People's cause; but in 
Oregon the party stood second in the lists and in 
Washington it ran a strong third. 

More than a million votes, nearly nine per cent 
of the total, were cast for the Populist candidates 
in this election — a record for a third party the 
year after its birth, and one exceeded only by that 
of the Republican party when it appeared for the 
first time in the national arena in 1856. Twenty- 
two electoral votes added point to the showing, for 
hitherto, since 1860, third-party votes had been so 
scattered that they had affected the choice of Presi- 
dent only as a makeweight between other parties 
in closely contested States. 

A week after the elections General Weaver an- 
nounced that the Populists had succeeded far be- 
yond their expectations. " The Republican party," 
he asserted, "is as dead as the Whig party was after 
the Scott campaign of 185S, and from this time for- 
ward will diminish in every State of the Union and 
cannot make another campaign. . . . The Pop- 
ulist will now commence a vigorous campaign and 



152 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

will push the work of organization and education 
in every coimty in the Union. ** There were those, 
however, who believed that the new party had 
made a great mistake in having anything to do 
with either of the old parties, that fusion, particu- 
larly of the sort which resulted in combination tick- 
ets, was a compromise with the enemy, and that 
more votes had been lost than won by the process. 
This feeling found characteristic expression in an 
editorial in a Minnesota paper : 

Take an audience of republican voters in a school- 
house where a county fusion has taken place — or the 
press is full of the electoral deal — and the audience 
will applaud the sentiments of the speaker — but they 
wont vote a mongrel or democratic ticket! A wet 
blanket has been thrown! 

"Oh," says someone, "but the democratic party is 
a party of reform!" Well, my friend, you better go 
down south and talk that to the peoples party where 
they have been robbed of their franchises by fraud 
and outrage! 

Ah, and there the peoples party fused the republi- 
cans!!! 

Oh whitewash ! Where is thy lime-kiln, that we may 
swab off the dark blemishes of the hour ! ! Aye, and on the 
whited wall, draw thee a picture of power and beauty 
— Cleveland, for instance, thanking the peoples party 
for all the favors gratuitously granted by our mongrel 
saints in speckled linen and green surtouts. 



THE POPULIST BOMBSHELL OP 1892 153 

As time gave perspective, however, the opinion 
grew that 1892 had yielded all that could possibly 
have been hoped. The lessons of the campaign may 
have been hard, but they had been learned, and, 
withal, a stinging barb had been thrust into the side 
of the Republican party, the organization which, 
in the minds of most crusaders, was principally re- 
sponsible for the creation and nurture of their ills. 
It was generally determined that in the next cam- 
paign Populism should stand upon its own feet; 
Democratic and Repubhcan votes should be won 
by conversion of individuals to the cause rather 
than by hybrid amalgamation of parties and pre- 
election agreements for dividing the spoils. But it 
was just this fusion which blinded the eyes of the 
old party leaders to the significance of the Popidist 
returns. Democrats, with a clear majority of elec- 
toral votes, were not inclined to worry about local 
losses or to value incidental gains; and Republicans 
felt that the menace of the third party was much 
less portentous than it might have been as an 
independent movement. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE SILVER ISSUE 



A REMARKABLE manifesto, dated February 22, 
V 1895, summarized the grievances of the Populists 
in these words: 

As early as 1865-^6 a conspiracy was entered into 
between the gold gamblers of Europe and America to 
accomplish the following purposes: to fasten upon the 
people of the United States the burdens of perpetual 
debt; to destroy the greenbacks which had safely 
brought us through the perils of war; to strike down 
silver as a money metal; to deny to the people the use 
of Federal paper and silver — the two independent 
sources of money guaranteed by the Constitution; to 
fasten upon the country the single gold standard of 
Britain, and to delegate to thousands of banking cor- 
porations, organized for private gain, the sovereign 
control, for all time, over the issue and volume of all 
supplemental paper currency. 

Declaring that the "international gold ring" was 
summoning all its powers to strike at the prosperity 
of the coimtry, the authors of this address called 

154 



THE SILVER ISSUE 155 



upon Populists to take up the gauntlet and meet 
"the enemy upon his chosen field of battle," with 
the " aid and cooperation of all persons who favor 
the immediate free coinage of silver at a ratio of 
16-1, the issue of all paper money by the Govern- ( 
ment without the intervention of banks of issue, and 
who are opposed to the issue of interest-bearing 
government bonds in the time of peace. ** '^ 

There was nothing new in this declaration of hos- 
tility to bank issues and interest-bearing bonds, 
nor in this demand for government paper money, 
for these prejudices and this predilection had given 
rise to the " Ohio idea, ** by force of which George 
H. Pendleton had hoped to achieve the presidency 
in 1868. These same notions had been the essence 
of the platforms of the Greenback party in the late 
seventies; and they had jostled government owner- 
ship of railroads for first place in pronunciamentos 
of labor and agricultural organizations and of third 
parties all during the eighties. Free silver, on the 
other hand, although not ignored in the earlier 
period, did not attain foremost rank among the 
demands of the dissatisfied classes until the last 
decade of the century and more particularly after 
the panic of 1893. 

Prior to 1874 or 1875 the ** silver question*' did 



I 
I 

/ 



I' 
/ 



V 



V 



156 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

not exist. In 1873 Congress, moved by the report 
of a commission it had authorized, had demone- 
tized silver; that is, it had provided that the gold 
dollar should be the standard of value, and omitted 
the standard silver dollar from the list of silver 
coins. ^ In this consisted the "Crime of *73/* At 
the time when this law was enacted it had not for 
many years been profitable to coin silver bullion 
into dollars because silver was undervalued at the 
established ratio of sixteen to one. In 1867 the 
International Monetary Conference of Paris had 
pronounced itself in favor of a single gold standard 
of currency, and the principal coimtries of Europe 
had preceded the United States in demonetizing 
silver or ii^miting its coinage. In 1874 as a re- 
sult of a revision of the statutes of the United 
States, the existing silver dollars were reduced to 
the basis of subsidiary coins with only limited legal 
tender value. 

The Act of 1873 was before Congress for four 
sessions; every section, including that which made 
gold the sole standard of value, was discussed 
even by those who later claimed that the Act had 
been passed surreptitiously. Whatever opposition 

^The only reference to the dollar was to "the trade dollar" ol 
heavier weight, for use in the Orient. 



THE SILVER ISSUE 157 

developed at this time was not directed against the 
omission of the silver dollar from the list of coins 
nor against the establishment of a single standard 
of value. The situation was quickly changed, how- 
ever, by the rapid decline in the market price of sil- 
ver. The bimetallists claimed that this decline was 
a result of the monetary changes; the advocates of *■ 
the gold standard asserted that it was due to the 
great increase in the production of silver. What- 
ever the cause, the result was that, shortly after 
silver had been demonetized, its value in propor- 
tion to gold fell below that expressed by the ratio 
of sixteen to one. Under these circumstances the ^ 
producers could have made a profit by taking their 
buUion to the mint and having it coined into dol- 
lars, if it had not been for the Act of 1873. It is 
not strange, therefore, that the people of those 
Western States whose prosperity depended largely 
on the silver mining industry demanded the re- 
monetization of this metal. At the same time the 
stringency in the money market and the low prices 
following the panic of 1873 added weight to the ar- 
guments of those who favored an increase in the 
quantity of currency in circulation and who saw in 
the free and unlimited coinage of silver one means 
of accomplishing this end. So powerful was the 



158 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

demand, especially from the West, that in 1878 the 
Bland-Allison Act, passed over the veto of Presi- 
dent Hayes, provided for the restoration of the sil- 
ver dollar to the list of coins, with full legal tender 
quahty, and required the Treasury to purchase in 
the open market from two to four million dollars' 
worth of bullion each month. This compromise, 
however, was unsatisfactory to those who desired 
the free coinage of silver, and it failed to please the 
champions of the single standard. 

For ten years the question of a choice between a 
single standard or bim^^taUism, between free coin- 
age or limited coinage of silver, was one of the prin- 
cipal economic problems of the world. Interna- 
tional conferences, destined to have no positive re- 
sults, met in 1878 and again in 1881 ; in the United 
States Congress read reports and debated measures 
on coinage in the intervals between tariflF debates. 
Political parties were split on sectional lines : West- 
ern Republicans and Democrats alike were largely 
in favor of free silver, but their Eastern associates 
as generally took the other side. Party platforms 
In the different States diverged widely on this is- 
sue; and monetary planks in national platforms, if 
included at all, were so framed as to commit 
the party to neither side. Both parties, however. 



THE SILVER ISSUE 159 

could safely pronounce for bimetallism under inter- 
national agreement, since there was little real pros- 
pect of procuring such an agreement. The minor 
parties as a rule frankly advocated free silver. 

In 1890, the subject of silver coinage assumed 
new importance. The silverites in Congress were 
reinforced by representatives from new States in 
the far West, the admission of which had not been 
unconnected with political exigencies on the part 
of the Republican party. The advocates of the 
change were not strong enough to force through a 
free-silver bill, but they were able by skillful log- 
roUing to bring about the passage of the Silver Pur- ^ 
chase Act. This measure, frequently called the 
Sherman Law,' directed the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury to purchase, with legal tender Treasury notes 
issued for the purpose, 4,500,000 oimces of pure sil- 
ver each month at the market price. As the metal 
was worth at that time about a dollar an ounce, this 
represented an increase, for the time being, over the 
maximum allowed under the Bland-Allison Act and *-■ 
more than double the minimum required by that 
measure, which was all the Treasury had ever 

< John Sherman, then Secretary of Treasury, had a large share in 
giving final form to the bill, which he favored only for fear of a still 
more objectionable measure. See Sherman's Recidlections, pp. 1069, 
1188. 



160 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

purchased. But the Silver Purchase Act failed to 
check the downward trend in the value of the metal. 
The bullion in a silver dollar, which had been worth 
r \ $1.02 in 1872, had declined to seventy-two cents in 
\ 1889. It rose to seventy-six in 1891 but then de- 
clined rapidly to sixty in 1893, and during the next 
three years the intrinsic value of a "cartwheel** 
was just about half its l^al tender value, 
f Even under the Bland-Allison Act the Treasury 
Department had experienced great dij£culty in 
keeping in circulation a reasonable proportion of 
the silver dollars and the silver certificates which 
were issued in lieu of part of them, and in maintain- 
ing a sufficient gold reserve to insure the stability 
of the currency. When the Silver Purchase Act 
went into operation, therefore, the monetary situa- 
tion contributed its share to conditions which pro- 
duced the panic of 1893. Thereupon the silver is- 
sue became more than ever a matter of nation-wide 
discussion. 

From the Atlantic to the Pacific the country was 
flooded with controversial writing, much of it cast 
in a form to make an appeal to classes which had 
neither the leisure nor the training to master this 
very intricate economic problem. W. H. Harvey's 
Coin^s Financial School was the most widely read 



THE SILVER ISSUE 161 

campaign document, although hundreds of similar 
pamphlets and books had an enormous circulation. 
The pithy and plausible arguments of "Coin" and 
his ready answers to questions supposedly put by 
prominent editors, bankers, and university profes- 
sors, as well as by J. R. Sovereign, master workman 
of the Knights of Labor, tickled the fancy of thou- 
sands of farmers who saw their own plight depicted 
in the crude but telling woodcuts which sprinkled 
the pages of the book. In his mythical school " the 
smooth little financier" converted to silver many 
who had been arguing for gold; but — what is more 
to the point — he also convinced hundreds of vot- 
ers that gold was the weapon with which the bank- 
ers of England and America had slain silver in order 
to maintain high mterest rates while reducing 
prices, and that it was the tool with which they 
were everywhere welding the shackles upon labor. 
" Coin " harped upon a string to which, down to the 
time of the Spanish War, most Americans were ever* 
responsive — the conflict of interests between Eng- 
land and the United States. " If it is claimed, " he 
said, ** we must adopt for our money the metal Eng- 
land selects, and can have no independent choice in 
the matter, let us make the test and find out if it is 
true. " He pointed to the nations of the earth where 

XX 



162 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

a silver standard ruled : *'The farmer in Mexico seUs 
his bushel of wheat for one dollar. The farmer 
in the United States sells his bushel of wheat for 
fifty cents. The former is proven by the history of 
the world to be an equitable price. The latter is 
writing its history, in letters of blood, on the ap- 
palling cloud of debt that is sweeping with ruin and 
desolation over the farmers of this country. ** 

When many men of sound reputation believed 
the maintenance of a gold standard impossible 
what wonder that millions of farmers shouted with 
"Coin": "Give the people back their favored 
primary money! Give us two arms with which to 
transact business! Silver the right arm and gold 
the left arm ! Silver the money of the people, and 
gold the money of the rich. Stop this legalized 
robbery that is transferring the property of the 
debtors to the possession of the creditors. . . . 
Drive these money-changers from our temples. 
Let them discover your aspect, their masters — the 
people." * 

The relations of the Populist party to silver were 
at once the result of conviction and expediency; 
cheap money had been one, frequently the most 
prominent, of the demands of the farming class, 
not only from the inception of the Greenback 



THE SILVER ISSUE 163 

movement, as we have seen, but from the very be- 
ginning of American history. Indeed, the pioneer 
everywhere has needed capital and has believed 
that it could be obtained only through money. The 
cheaper the money, the better it served his needs. 
The Western farmer preferred, other things being 
equal, that the supply of currency should be in- 
creased by direct issue of paper by the Government. 
Things, however, were not equal. In the Moun- 
tain States were many interested in silver as a com- 
modity whose assistance could be counted on in a 
campaign to increase the amount of the metal in 
circulation. There were, moreover, many other 
voters who, while regarding Greenbackism as an 
economic heresy, were convinced that bimetallism 
offered a safe and sound solution of the currency 
problem. For the sake of added votes the infla- 
tionists were ready to waive any preference as to 
the form in which the cheap money should be 
issued. Before the actual formation of the People's 
Party, the farmers* organizations had set out to 
capture votes by advocating free silver. After the 
election of 1892 free silver captured the Populist 
organization. 

Heartened by the large vote of 1892 the Populist 
leaders prepared to drive the wedge further into the 



164 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

old parties and even hoped to send their candidates 
through the breach to Congress and the presidency. 
A secret organization, known as the Industrial 
League of the United States, in which the leaders 
were for the most part the prominent officials of the 
People's Party, afforded for a time through its 
lodges the machinery with which to control and 
organize the silverites of the West and the South. 

The most notable triumph of 1893 was the selec- 
tion of Judge William V. Allen, by the Democrats 
and Independents of Nebraska, to represent that 
State in the United States Senate. Bom in Ohio, 
in a house which had been a station on the ^^under- 
ground railroad" to assist escaping negroes, Allen 
at ten years of age had gone with his family to Iowa. 
After one unsuccessful attempt, he enlisted in the 
Union Army at the age of fifteen and served from 
1862 to the end of the War. When peace came, he 
resumed his schooling, attended college, studied 
law, and in 1869 was admitted to the bar. In 1884 
he went to Madison County, Nebraska, where 
seven years later he was elected district judge by 
the Populists. Reared in a family which had been 
Republican, he himself had supported this party 
until the campaign of 1890. "I have always," 
said he, ^'looked upon a political party . . . 



THE SILVER ISSUE 165 

simply as a means to an end. I think a party 
should be held no more sacred than a man's shoes 
or garments,^ and that whenever it fails to subserve 
the purposes of good government a man should 
, abandon it as cheerfully as he dispenses with his 
womout clothes/* As Senator, Allen attracted 
attention not only by his powers of physical en- 
durance as attested by a fif teen-hoiu* speech in op- 
position to the bill for the repeal of the Silver Pur- 
chase Act, but also by his integrity of character. 
**If Populism can produce men of Senator Allen's 
mold," was the comment of one Eastern review, 
^^and then lift them into positions of the highest 
responsibility, one might be tempted to suggest 
that an epidemic of this Western malady would 
prove beneficial to some Eastern communities and 
have salutary results for the nation at large." 

In this same year (1893) Kansas became a storm- \ 
center in national politics once more by reason of a 
contest between parties for control of the lower 
house of the legislature. The returns had given 
the RepubUcans a majority in the assembly, but 
several Republican seats had been contested on sus- 
picion of fraud. If the holders of these seats were 
debarred from voting, the Populists could outvote 
the Republicans. The situation itself was fraught 



166* THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

with comedy; and the actions of the contestants 
made it nothing less than farce. The assembly 
convened on the 10th of January, and both Repub- 
lican and Populist speakers were declared duly 
elected by their respective factions. Loftily ignor- , 
ing each other, the two speakers went to the desk 
and attempted to conduct the business of the 
house. Neither party left the assembly chamber 
that night; the members slept on the benches; the 
speakers called a truce at two in the morning, and 
lay down, gavels in hand, facing each other behind 
the desk, to get what rest they could. For over 
two weeks the two houses continued in tumultuous 
session. Meanwhile men were crowding into To- 
peka from all over the State: grim-faced Populist 
farmers, determined that Republican chicanery 
should not wrest from them the fruits of the elec- 
tion; equally determined Republicans, resolved 
that the Populists should not, by charges of elec- 
tion fraud, rob them of their hard-won majority. 
Both sides came armed but apparently hoping to 
A avoid bloodshed. 

Finally, on the 15th of February, the Populist 
house retreated from the chamber, leaving the Re- 
publicans in possession, and proceeded to transact 
business of state in the corridor of the Capitol. 



THE SILVER ISSUE 167 

Populist sympathizers now besieged the assembly 
chamber, immuring the luckless Republicans and 
incidentally a few women who had come in as mem- 
bers of the suffrage lobby and were now getting 
more of political equality than they had antici- 
pated. Food had to be sent through the Populist 
lines in baskets, or drawn up to the windows of 
the chamber while the Populist mob sat on the 
main stairway within. Towards evening, the Pop- 
ulist janitor turned off the heat; and the Republi- 
cans shivered until oil stoves were fetched by their 
followers outside and hoisted through the windows. 
The Republican sheriff swore in men of his party as 
special deputies; the Populist governor called out 
the militia. 

The situation was at once too absurd and too 
grave to be permitted to continue. "Sockless" 
Jerry Simpson now counseled the Populists to let 
the decision go to the courts. The judges, to be 
sure, were Republican; but Simpson, ever resoiuxje- 
f ul, argued that if they decided against the Popu- 
lists, the house and senate could then impeach 
them. Mrs. Lease, however, was sure that the 
Populists would not have the courage to take up 
impeachment proceedings, and the event proved 
her judgment correct. When the struggle was 



168 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

finally brought to an end with the assistance of the 
judicial machinery, the Republicans were left in 
control of the house of representatives, while the 
Populists retained the senate. In joint session 
the Republicans could be outvoted; hence a silver 
Democrat, John Martin, was sent to Washington 
to work with PeflFer in the Senate for the common 
cause of silver. 

( The congressional and state elections of 1894 re- 
vealed the unstable equilibrium of parties, and at 
the same time the total Populist vote of nearly a 

« million and a half reflected the increasing popular 
unrest. In the West, however, the new party was 
not so successful in winning elections as it had been 
in 1892 because the hostile attitude, sometimes of 
the Populists and sometimes of the Democrats, 
made fusion imposi^ble in most cases. A few vic- 
K tories were won, to be sure: Nebraska elected a 
free-silver Democrat-Populist governor, while Ne- 
vada was carried by the silver party; but Colorado, 
Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and North Dakota re- 
turned to the Republican fold. In the South, the 
fusion between Populists and Republicans against 
the dominant Democrats was more successful. 
From several States, Congressmen were elected, 
who, whether under the name of Populist or 



THE SILVER ISSUE 169 

Republican, represented the radical element. In 
South Carolina the Democratic party adopted the 
Farmers' Alliance platform, swept the State in the 
elections, and sent "Pitchfork" Tillman to the 
United States Senate as an anti-administration 
Democrat. Tillman admitted that he was not one 
of those infatuated persons who believed that "all 
the financial wisdom in the country is monopolized 
by the East, " and who said, " * Me, too, * every time 
Cleveland grunts." "Send me to Washington," 
was his advice to cheering crowds, "and TU stick 
my pitchfork into his old ribs!" 

Every political move in 1895 was calculated with 
reference to the presidential election of 1896. Both 
old parties were inoculated with the free-silver 
virus; silver men could have passed a free coinage 
bill in both houses of Congress at any moment but 
were restrained chiefly by the knowledge that such 
a measure would be vetoed by President Cleveland. 
The free coinage of silver, which was the chief de- 
mand of Populism, was also the ardent desire of a 
majority of the people west of the Alleghanies, ir- 
respective of their political affiliations. Nothing 
seemed more logical, then, than the union of 
all silver men to enforce the adoption of their 
program. There was great diversity of opinion. 



170 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

however, as to the best means of accomplishing 
this union. General Weaver started a movement 
to add the forces of the American Bimetallic 
League and the silver Democrats to the ranks of 
I the People's Party. But the silver Democrats, be- 
I lieving that they comprised a majority of the 
j party, proceeded to organize themselves for the 
' purpose of controlling that party at its coming na- 
tional conventions; and most of the Populist lead* 
ers felt that, should this movement be victorious, 
, the greatest prospect of success for their program 
lay in a fusion of the two parties. Some there were, 
indeed, who opposed fusion under any conditions, 
foreseeing that it would mean the eventual extinc- 
tion of the People's Party. Prominent among 
these were Ignatius Donnelly of Minnesota, "Gen- 
eral" J. S. Coxey of Ohio, and Senator PeflFer of 
Kansas. In the South the "middle-of-the-road" 
element, as the opponents of fusion were called, was 
especially strong, for there the Populists had been 
cooperating with the Republicans since 1892, and 
not even agreement on the silvet issue could break 
down the barrier of antagonism between them and 
the old-line Democrats. 

It remained, then, for the political events of 1896 
to decide which way the current of Populism would 



THE SILVER ISSUE 171 

flow — whether it would maintain an independent 
course, receiving tributaries from every political 
source, eventually becoming a mighty river, and, 
like the Republican party of 1856 and 1860, sweep- 
ing away an older party; or whether it would turn 
aside and mingle with the stream of Democracy, 
there to lose its identity forever. 



CHAPTER Xn 

THE BATTIiE OF THE STANDARDS 

/ When the Republicans met in convention at St. 

; Louis in the middle of June, 1896, the monetary 
issue had already dwarfed all other political ques- 
tions. It was indeed the rock on which the party 
might have crashed in utter shipwreck but for the 
precautions of one man who had charted the angry 
waters and the dangerous shoals and who now had 
a firm grasp on the helm. Marcus A. Hanna, or 

, " Uncle Mark," was the genial owner of more mines, 
oil wells, street railways, aldermen, and legislators 

^~than any other man in Ohio. Hanna was an al- 
most perfgd^example of wh^t the Populists d e- 
Xiomiced as the capitalist in politics. Cynically 
declaring that no man m public life owes the pub- 
lic anything, " he had gone his unscrupulous way, 
getting control of the political machine of Cleve- 
land, acquiring influence in the state legislature, 
and now even assuming dictatorship over the 

174 



V 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 173 

national Republican party. Because he had found 
that political power was helpful in the prosecution 
of his vast business enterprises, he went forth to 
accumulate political power, just as frankly as he 
would have gone to buy the machinery for pump- 
ing oil from one of his wells. Hanna was a stanch ( 
friend of the gold standard, but he was too clever to 
alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites 
by supporting the nomination of a man known to 
be an imcompromising advocate of gold. He chose 
a safer candidate, a man whose character he sin- 
cerely admired and whose opinions he might re- 
sonably expect to sway — his personal friend. Ma- 
jor William McKinley . This was a clever choice : ' 
McKinley was known to the public largely as the ^ 
author of the McKinley tariff bill; his protec- 
tionism pleased the East; and what was known 
of his attitude on the currency question did not 
offend the West. In Congress he had voted for : 
the Bland- Allison bill and had advocated the freer \ 
use of silver. McKinley was, indeed, an ideally 
*^safe" candidate, an upright, affable gentleman 
whose aquiline f eatiu'es conferred on him the sem- 
blance of commanding power and masked the es- 
sential weakness and indecision which would make 
him, from Mark Hanna's point of view, a desirable 



174 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

President. McKinley would always swim with 
the tide. 
In his friend's behalf Hanna carried on a shrewd 

/ campaign in the newspapers, keeping the question 
of currency in the background as far as possible,!^ 
playing up McKinley's sound tariff policy, and re4f 
peating often the slogan — welcome after the recent 
lean years — "McKinley and the full dinner pail." 
McKinley prudently refused to take any stand on 

' the currency question, protesting that he could not 
anticipate the party platform and that he would be 
boimd by whatever declarations the party might 
see fit to make. Even after the convention had 
opened, McKinley and Hanna were reticent on the 
silver question. Finally, fearing that some kind of 
compromise would be made, the advocates of the 
gold standard went to Mr. Hanna and demanded 
, that a gold plank be incorporated in the platform. 
Hanna gracefully acceded to their demands and 
thus put them imder obligation to repay him by 
supporting McKinley for the nomination. The 
platform which was forthwith reported to the con- 
vention contained the unequivocal gold plank, 
as Hanna had long before planned. Immediately 
thereafter a minority of thirty-four delegates, led 
by Senator Teller of Colorado, left the convention. 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 175 

later to send out an address advising all Republi- 
cans who believed in free coinage of silver to sup- 
port the Democratic ticket. The nomination of 
William McKinley and Garret A. Hobart followed 
with very little opposition. 

There was nothing cut and dried about the^ 
Democratic convention which assembled three 
weeks later in Chicago. The Northeastern States 
and a few others sent delegations in favor of the 
gold standard, but free silver and the West were in 
the saddle. This was demonstrated when, in the 
face of all precedent, the nominee of the national 
committee for temporary chairman was rejected 
in favor of Senator John W, Daniel of Virginia, a 
strong silver man. The second day of the conven- 
tion saw the advantage pushed further : each Terri- 
tory had its representation increased threefold; 
of contesting delegations those who represented 
the gold element in their respective States were 
unseated to make way for silverites; and Stephen 
M. White, one of the California senators, was made 
permanent chairman. 

On the third day of the convention the platform, 
devoted largely to the money question, was the 
subject of bitter debate. "We are unalterably 
opposed to monometallism, which has locked fast 



a^ 



y 






176 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the prosperity of an industrial people in the pa- 
ralysis of hard times," proclaimed the report of the 
committee on resolutions. *^Gold monometallism 
is a British policy, and its adoption has brought 
other nations into financial servitude to London. 
• . . We demand the free and unlimited coinage of 
both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 
sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or con- 
sent of any other nation." A minority of the com- 
mittee on resolutions proposed two amendments 
to the report, one pronouncing in favor of a gold 
standard, and the other commending the record of 
Grover Cleveland, a courtesy always extended to a 
presidential incumbent of the same party. At the 
name of Cleveland, Senator Tillman leaped to his 
feet and delivered himself of characteristic in- 
vective against the President, the "tool of Wall 
Street," the abject slave of gold. Senator David 
B. Hill of New York, who had been rejected toi 
temporary chairman, defended the gold plank in 
a logical analysis of monetary principles. But 
logical analysis could not prevail against emotion; 
that clamorous mass of men was past reasoning 
now, borne they hardly knew whither on the cur- 
rent of their own excitement. He might as well 
have tried to dam Niagara. 






THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 177 

Others tried to stem the onrushing tide but with 
no better success. It seemed to be impossible for 
any one to command the attention and respect of 
that tumultuous gathering. Even Senator James 
K. Jones of Arkansas, a member of the major- 
ity group of the committee on resolutions, failed 
equally with Tillman to give satisfactory expres- 
sion to the sentiments of that convention, which 
felt inchoately what it desired but which still needed 
a leader to voice its aspirations. This spokesman 
the convention now found in William Jennings 
Bryan, to whom after a few sentences Senator 
Jones yielded the floor. 

Bryan appeared in Chicago as a member of 
the contesting silver delegation from Nebraska. A J^ 
young man, barely thirty-six years old, he had TT 
already become a well-known figure in the West, 
where for years he had been expounding the doc- 
trine of free silver. A native of Illinois, whither his 
father had come from Culpeper County, Virginia, 
Bryan had grown up on a farm. His father's 
means had been ample to afford him a good educa- 
tion, which he completed, so far as schooling was 
concerned, at Illinois College, Jacksonville, and at 
the Union College of Law in Chicago. While in 
Chicago Bryan was employed in the law office of 



12 



178 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Lyman Trumbull, one of the stanehest represent- 
atives of independence in politics — an independ- 
ence which had caused him to break with the Demo- 
cratic party over the slavery issue, and which, as 
expressed in his vote against the impeax^hment of 
President Johnson, had resulted in his retirement 
to private life. To the young law student Trum- 
bull took a particular fancy, and his dominating 
personality exerted an abiding influence over the 
character and career of his prot6g6. 

After a brief period of law practice in Jackson- 
ville, Illinois, Bryan removed with his family to 
Lincoln, Nebraska. The legal profession never 
held great attraction for him, despite the encour- 
agement and assistance of his wife, who herself took 
up the study of law after her marriage and was ad- 
mitted to the bar. Public questions and politics 
held greater interest for the young man, who had 
already, in his college career, shown his ability as 
an orator. Nebraska oflFered the opportunity he 
craved. At the Democratic state convention in 
Omaha in 1888 he made a speech on the tariflf 
which gave him immediately a state-wide reputa- 
tion as an orator and expounder of public issues. 
He took an active part in* the campaign of that 
year, and in 1889 was oflFered, but declined, the 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 179 

nomination for lieutenant governor on the Demo- 
cratic ticket. In 1890 he won election to Congress 
by a majority of seven thousand in a district which 
two years before had returned a Republican, and this 
he accomplished in spite of the neglect of party 
managers who regarded the district as hopeless. 
In Congress he became a member of the Committee 
on Ways and Means. On the floor of the House his 
formal speeches on the tariff, a topic to which noth- 
ing new could be brought, commanded the atten- 
tion of one of the most critical and blas6 audiences 
of the world. The silver question, which was the 
principal topic before Congress at the following 
session, afforded a fresher field for his oratory; in- 
deed, Bryan was the principal aid to Bland both 
as speaker and parliamentarian in the old lead- 
er's monetary campaign. When Bryan sat down 
after a three-hour speech in which he attacked 
the gold standard, a colleague remarked, "It ex- 
hausts the subject.** In 1894 a tidal wave of Re- 
publicanism destroyed Bryan's chances of being 
elected United States Senator, a consummation for 
which he had been laboring on the stump and, for a 
brief period, as editor of the Omaha World-Herald. 
He continued, however, to urge the silver cause in 
preparation for the presidential campaign of 1896. 



180 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Taller and broader than most men and of more 
commanding presence, Bryan was a striking figure 
in the convention hall. He wore the inevitable 
black suit of the professional man of the nineties, 
but his dress did not seem conventional: his black 
tie sat at too careless an angle; his black hair was a 
httle too long. These eccentricities the cartoonists 
seized on and exaggerated so that most people who 
have not seen the man picture Bryan, not as a de- 
termined looking man with a piercing eye and tight- 
set mouth, but as a grotesque frock-coated figure 
with the sombrero of a cow-puncher and the hair 
of a poet. K the delegates at the convention noticed 
any of these peculiarities as Bryan arose to speak, 
they soon forgot them. His undoubted power 
to carry an audience with him was never better 
demonstrated than on that sweltering July day in 
Chicago when he stilled the tumult of a seething 
mass of 15,000 people with his announcement that 
he came to speak "in defense of a cause as holy as 
the cause of Uberty — the cause of humanity, '* and 
when he stirred the same audience to frenzy with 
his closing defiance of the opponents of free silver: 

If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have 
it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of 
having a gold standard because England has, we will 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 181 

restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetal- 
lism because the United States has it. If they dare to >y 
come out in the open field and defend the gold stand- 
ard as a good thing, we will fight them to the utter- 
most. Having behind us the producing masses of this 
nation and the world, supported by the commercial 
interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers every- 
where, we will answer their demand for a gold standard 
by saying to them: You shall not press down upon 
the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not 
crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. 

Meeting Senator Hill's careful arguments with 
a clever retort, blunting the keenness of his logic 
with a well-turned period, polished to perfection 
by numerous repetitions before all sorts of audi- 
ences during the previous three or four years, Bry- 
an held the convention in the hollow of his hand. 
The leadership which had hitherto been lacking 
was now found. ' The platform as reported by the 
committee was adopted by a vote of more than 
two to one; and the convention, but for the opposi- 
tion of Bryan himself, would have nominated him 
on the spot. The next day it took but five ballots 
to set aside all the favorite sons, including the 
" Father of Free Silver *' himself, Richard P. Bland, . 
and to make Bryan the standard bearer of the party. 

Far different in character and appearance from 



188 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

the Republican group which had assembled in the 
same building a few weeks before, was the Populist 
v^ convention which met in St. Louis late in July. 
Many of the 1300 delegates were white-haired and 
had grown old in the service of reform in the various 
independent movements of preceding years; some 
of them had walked long distances to save railroad 
fare, while others were so poor that, having ex- 
hausted their small store of money before the long- 
drawn-out convention adjourned, they suffered 
from want of regular sleeping places and adequate 
food. All were impressed with the significance of 
the decision they must make. 

Gone were the hopes of the past months; the 
Populist party would not sweep into its ranks all 
anti-monopolists and all silverites — for one of the 
old parties had stolen its loudest thunder! It was 
an error of political strategy to place the conven- 
tion after those of the two great parties in the 
expectation that both would stand on a gold plat- 
form. Now it was for these delegates to decide 
whether they would put their organization behind 
the Democratic nominee with a substantial pros- 
pect of victory, or preserve intact the identity of the 
Populist party, split the silver vote, and deliver 
over the election to a gold Republican. 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 18S 

The majority of the delegates, believing that the 
Democratic party had been inoculated with the 
serum of reform, were ready for the sake of a prin- 
ciple to risk the destruction of the party they had 
labored so hard to build. Senator William V. Allen 
of Nebraska summed up the situation when he said: 

If by putting a third ticket in the field you would de- 
feat free coinage; defeat a withdrawal of the issue 
power of national banks; defeat Government owner- 
ship of railroads, telephones and telegraphs; defeat 
an income tax and foist gold monometallism and high 
taxation upon the people for a generation to come, 
which would you do? . • . When I shall go back to 
the splendid commonwealth that has so signally 
honored me beyond my merits, I want to be able to say 
to the people that all the great doctrines we have advo- 
cated for years, have been made possible by your action. 
I do not want them to say that the Populists have been 
advocates of reforms when they could not be accom- 
plished, but when the first ray of light appeared and 
the people were looking with expectancy and with 
anxiety for relief, the party was not equal to the oc- 
casion; that it was stupid; it was blind; it kept *Hhe 
middle of the road," and missed the golden opportunity. 

Although most of the members of the convention 
were ready to coOperate with the Democrats, there 
was a very strong feeling that something should be 
done, if possible, to preserve the identity of the 



184 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

Populist party and to safeguard its future. An 
active minority, moreover, was opposed to any 
sort of fusion or cooperation. This " middle-of-the- 
road" group included some Western leaders of 
prominence, such as Peflfer and Donnelly, but its 
main support came from the Southern delegates. 
To them an alliance with the Democratic party 
meant a surrender to the enemy, to an enemy with 
whom they had been struggling for four years for 
the control of their state and local governments. 
Passionately they pleaded with the convention to 
save them from such a calamity. Well they knew 
that small consideration would be given to those 
who had dared stand up and oppose the ruling 
aristocracy of the South, who had even shaken the 
Democratic grip upon the governments of some of 
the States. Further, a negro delegate from Georgia 
portrayed the disaster which would overwhelm the 
poUtical aspirations of his people if the Populist 
party, which alone had given them full fellowship, 
should surrender to the Democrats. 

The advocates of fusion won their first victory in 
the election of Senator Allen as permanent chair- 
man, by a vote of 758 to 564. As the nomina- 
tion of Bryan for President was practically a fore- 
gone conclusion, the *' middle-of-the-road " element 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 185 

concentrated its energies on preventing the nomi- 
nation of Arthur Bewail of Maine, the choice of the 
Democracy, for Vice-President. The convention 
was persuaded, by a narrow margin, to take the 
unusual step of selecting the candidate for Vice- 
President before the head of the ticket was chosen. 
On the first ballot Bewail received only 257 votes, 
while 469 were cast for Thomas Watson of Georgia. 
Watson, who was then nominated by acclamation, 
was a country editor who had made himself a force 
in the politics of his own State and had served the 
Populist c^use conspicuously in Congress. Two 
motives influenced the convention in this proce- 
dure. As a bank president, a railroad director, and 
an employer of labor on a large scale. Bewail waay 
felt to be utterly unsuited to carry the standard 
of the People's Party. More effective than this 
feeling, however, was the desire to do something to 
preserve the identity of the party, to show that it 
had not wholly surrendered to the Democrats. It 
was a compromise, moreover, which was probably 
necessary to prevent a bolt of the "middle-of-the- 
road" element and the nomination of an entirely 
independent ticket. 

Even with this concession the Southern delegates 
continued their opposition to fusion. Bryan was ' 



4 



186 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

placed in nomination, quite appropriately, by Gren- 
eral Weaver, who again expressed the sense of the 
convention: "After due consideration, in which 
I have fully canvassed every possible phase of 
the subject, I have failed to find a single good 
reason to justify us in placing a third ticket in the 
field. ... I would not endorse the distinguished 
gentleman named at Chicago. I would nominate 
him outright, and make him our own, and then 
share justly and rightfully in his election." The 
irreconcilables, nearly all from the South and in- 
cluding a hundred delegates from Texas, voted for 
S. F. Norton of Chicago, who received 321 votes as 
against 1042 for Bryan. 

Because of the electoral system, the agreement 
of two parties to support the same candidate for 
President could have no effect, unless arrangements 
were made for fusion within the States. An ad- 
dress issued by the executive committee of the na- 
tional committee of the^People's Party during the 
course of the campaign outlined the method of 
uniting "the voters of the country against Mc- 
Kinley," and of overcoming the "obstacles and 
embarrassments which, if the Democratic party 
had put the cause first and party second, " would 
&ot have been encountered: "This could be 



THE BATTLE OP THE STANDARDS 187 

acxx)mplished only by arrangmg for a division of the 
electoral votes in every State possible, securing so 
many electors for Bryan and Watson and conced- 
ing so many to Bryan and Sewall. At the opening 
of the campaign this, under the circumstances, 
seemed the wisest course for your committee, and 
it is clearer today than ever that it was the only 
safe and wise course if your votes were to be cast 
and made effective for the rehef of an oppressed 
and outraged people. Following this line of policy 
your committee has arranged electoral tickets in 
three-foiuiiis of the States and will do all in its 
power to make the same arrangements in all of 
the States." 

The committee felt it necessary to warn the 
people of the danger of "a certain portion of the 
rank and file of the People's Party being misled by 
so-called leaders, who, for reasons best known to 
themselves, or for want of reason, are advising 
voters to rebel against the joint electoral tickets 
and put up separate electoral tickets, or to with- 
hold their support from the joint electoral tickets/* 
Such so-called leaders were said to be aided and 
abetted by "Democrats of the revenue stripe, who 
are not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt,*' 
and by Republican "goldbugs '* who in desperation 



\ 



188 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

were seizing upon every straw to prevent fusion 
and so to promote their own chances of success. 

In the North and West, where the PopuUst had 
been fusing with the Democrats oflf and on for 
several years, the combinations were arranged with 
Kttle diflSculty. In apportioning the places on the 
electoral tickets the strength of the respective 
parties was roughly represented by the number of 
places assigned to each. Usually it was under- 
stood that all the electors, if victorious, would vote 
for Bryan, while the Democrats would cast their 
second place ballots for Sewall and the Populists 
for Watson. 

In the South much more difficulty was experi- 
enced in arranging fusion tickets, and the spectacle 
of Populists co5perating with RepubUcans in state 
elections and with Democrats in the national elec- 
tion illustrated the truth of the adage that "poli- 
tics makes strange bedfellows." Only in Arkan- 
sas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and North 
Carolina, of the Southern States, were joint electo- 
ral tickets finally agreed upon. In Tennessee the 
Populists offered to support the Democratic elec- 
tors if they would all promise to vote for Watson, a 
proposal which was naturally declined. In Florida 
the chairman of the state committee of the People's 



THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 189 

Party, went so far on the eve of the election as to 
advise all members of the party to vote for Mc- 
Ejnley; and in Texas there was an organized bolt 
of a large part of the Populists to the Republican 
party, notwithstanding its gold standard and pro- g 
tective tariff platform. ffi 

No campaign since that of 1860 was so hotly and 
bitterly contested as the "Battle of the Standards'* 
in 1896. The Republicans broke all previous 
records in the amount of printed matter which they 
scattered broadcast over the country. Money was 
freely spent. McKinley remained at his home in . 
Canton, Ohio, and received, day after day, delega- 
tions of pilgrims come to harken to his words of 
wisdom, which were then, through the medium 
of the press, presented to similar groups from 
Mame to California. For weeks, ten to twenty- 
five thousand people a day sought "the shrine of 
the golden calf." 

In the meantime Bryan, as the Democrat-Popu- 
list candidate, toured the country, traveling over 
thirteen thousand miles, reaching twenty-nine 
States, and addressing miUions of voters. It was 
estimated, for instance, that in the course of his 
tour of West Virginia at least half the electorate 
must have heard his voice. Most of the influential 



190 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

newspapers were opposed to Bryan, but his tours 
and meetings and speeches had so much news value 
that they received the widest pubKcity. As the 
campaign drew to a close, it tended more and more 
to become a class contest. That it was so con- 
ceived by the Populist executive committee is 
apparent from one of its manifestoes: 

There are but two sides in the conflict that is being 
waged in this country today. On the one side are the 
allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great 
trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enact- 
ment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people. 
On the other side are the farmers, laborers, merchants, 
and all others who produce wealth and bear the bur^ 
dens of taxation. The one represents the wealthy and 
powerful classes who want the control of the Govern- 
ment to plunder the people. The other represents the 
people, contending for equality before the law, and the 
rights of man. Between these two there is no middle 
groimd. 

When the smoke of battle cleared away the elec- 
tion returns of 1896 showed that McKinley had 
received 600,000 more popular votes than Bryan 
and would have 271 electoral votes to 176 for the 
Democrat-Populist candidate. West of the Mis- 
sissippi River the cohorts of Bryan captured the 
electoral vote in every State except California, 



THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS 191 

Minnesota, North Dakota, Iowa, and Oregon. The 
South continued its Democratic solidity, except 
that West Virginia and Kentucky went to McKin- 
ley. All the electoral votes of the region east of 
the Mississippi and north of Mason's and Dixon's 
line were Republican. The old Northwest, to- 
gether with Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota, 
a region which had been the principal theater of the 
Granger movement a generation before, now joined 
forces with the conservative and industrial East to 
defeat a combination of the South with the newer 
agrarian and mining frontiers of the West. | 

The People's Party had staked all on a throw of i 
the dice and had lost. It had given its life as a- r 
pc^tical organization to further the election of / 
Bryan, and he had not been elected. Its hope for 
independent existence was now gone; its strength 
was considerably less in 1896 than it had been in 
1892 and 1894. ^ The explanation would seem to 

' Of the 6,509,000 votes which Biyan received, about 4,669,000 were 
cast for the fusion electoral tickets. In only seven of the fusion States 
is it possible to distinguish between Democrat and Populist votes; the 
totals here are 1,499,000 and 93,000 respectively. The fusion Popu- 
list vote of 45,000 was essential for the success of the Bryan electors in 
Kansas; and in California the similar vote of 22,000, added to that of 
the Democrats, gave Bryan one of the electors. In no other State in 
this group did the Populist vote have any effect upon the result. The 
part played by the People's party in the other twenty-two of the fusion 



/l; 



19« THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



\ 



be, in part at least, that the People's Party was 
bivertebrate as well as bimetallic." It was com- 
posed of men who not long since had other political 
affiUations, who had left one party for the sake of 
the cause, and who consequently did not find it 
difficult to leave another for the same reason. In 



States is difficult to determine; in some cases, however, the situation is 
revealed in the results of state elections. The best example of this is 
North Carolina, where the Democrat-Populist electors had a major- 
ity of 19,000, while at the same election fusion between Republicans 
and Populists for all state officers except governor and lieutenant 
governor was victorious. The Populist candidate for governor re- 
ceived about 31,000 votes and the Republican was elected. It is 
evident that the third party held the balance of power in North Caro- 
lina. The Populist votes were probably essential for the foMon vic- 
tories in Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and Washington; but, as there 
was fusion on state tickets also, it is impossible to estimate the part 
played by the respective parties. The total Populist vote in the ten 
States in which there were independent Democratic and Populist 
electoral tickets was 122,000 (of which 80,000 were cast in Texas and 
24,000 in Alabama) and as none of the ten were close States the failure 
to agree on electoral tickets had no effect on the result. The " middle- 
of-the-road** Populist votes, in States where there were also fusion 
tickets amounted to only 8000 — of which 6000 were cast in Penni^I- 
vania and 1000 each in Illinois and Kansas. 

The Populist vote as a whole was much larger than 223,000 — the 
total usually given in the tables — for this figure does not include the 
vote in the twenty-two fusion States in which the ballots were not 
SQMirately counted. This is apparent from the fact that the twenty- 
seven electoral votes from ten States which were cast for Watson came, 
with one exception, from States in which no separate Populist vote 
was recorded. It is evident, nevertheless, from the figures in States 
where comparisons are possible, that the party had lost ground. 



i^j^^ 



THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARDS lOS 

the West large numbers of former Populists un- 
doubtedly went over completely to the Democracy, 
even when they had the opportunity of voting for 
the same Bryan electors under a Populist label. 
In the South many members of the party, disgusted 
at the predicament in which they found themselves, 
threw in their lot with the Republicans. The cap- 7 
ture of the Democracy by the forces of free silvep"^- 
gave the death blow to Populism. 



3P"^ 



13 



CHAPTER Xm 

THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 

The People's Party was mortally stricken by the 
events of 1896. Most of the cohorts which had 
been led into the camp of Democracy were there- 
after beyond the control of their leaders; and even 
the remnant that still called itself Populist was 
divided into two factions. In 1900 the radical 
\ group refused to endorse the Fusionists' nomina- 
tion of Bryan and ran an independent ticket headed 
by Wharton Barker of Pennsylvania and that in- 
veterate rebel, Ignatius Donnelly. This ticket, 
however, received only 50,000 votes, nearly one-half 
of which came from Texas. When the Democrats 
nominated Judge Alton B. Parker of New York in 
1904, the Popuhsts formally dissolved the alliance 
with the Democracy and nominated Thomas E. 
Watson of Georgia for President. By this defec- 
tion the Democrats may have lost something; but 
the Populists gained Uttle. Most of the radicals 

194 



THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 196 

who deserted the Democracy at this time went over 
to Roosevelt> the RepubUcan candidate. In 1908 
the Populist vote fell to 29,000; in 1912 the party 
gave up the ghost in a thinly-attended convention 
which neither made nominations of its own nor 
endorsed any other candidate. In Congress the 
forces of PopuUsm dwindled rapidly, from the 27 
members of 1897 to but 10 in 1899, and none at all 
in 1903. 

The men who had been leaders in the heyday of 
Populism retired from national prominence to mere 
local celebrity. Donnelly died in 1901, leaving a 
picturesque legacy of friendships and animosities, of 
literary controversy and radical poUtical theory. 
Weaver remained with the fusion PopuUsts through 
the campaign of 1900; but by 1904 he had gone over 
to the Democratic party. The erstwhile candidate 
for the presidency was content to serve as mayor 
of the small town of Colfax, Iowa, where he made 
his home until his death in 1912, respected by his 
neighbors and forgotten by the world. PeflFer, at 
the expiration of his term in the Senate, ran an 
unsuccessful tilt for the governorship of Kansas on 
the Prohibition ticket. In 1900 he returned to 
the comfort of the RepubUcan fold, to become an 
ardent supporter of McKinley and Roosevelt. 



196 THE A6BARIAN CRUSADE 

But the defection and death of Populist leaders, 
the collapse of the party, and the disintegration of 
the alliances could not stay the farmers' move- 
ment. It ebbed for a time, just as at the end of the 
Granger period, but it was destined to rise again. 
The unprecedented prosperity, especially among 
the farmers, which began with the closing years of 
the nineteenth century and has continued with 
little reaction down to the present has removed 
many causes for agrarian discontent; but some of 
the old evils are left, and fresh grievances have 
come to the front. Experience taught the farmer 
one lesson which he has never forgotten: that 
\^ whether prosperous or not, he can and must pro- 
/ mote his welfare by organization. So it is that, as 
one association or group of associations declines, 
others arise. In some States, where the Grange 
has survived or has been reintroduced, it is once 
more the leading organ of the agricultural class. 
Elsewhere other organizations, sometimes confined 
to a single State, sometimes transcending state 
lines, hold the farmers' allegiance more or less 
firmly; and an attempt is now being made to unite 
all of these associations in an American Federation 
of Farmers. 
Until recently these orders have devoted their 



THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 197 

energies principaUy to promoting the social and 
intellectual welfare of the farmer and to business 
co9peration> sometimes on a large scale. But, as 
soon as an organization has drawn into its ranks a 
considerable proportion of the farmers of a State, 
especially in the West, the temptation to use its 
power in the field of politics is almost irresistible. 
At first, poUtical activity is usually confined to 
declarations in favor of n^easures beheved to be in 
the interests of the farmers as a class; but from 
this it is only a short step to the support of candi- 
dates for office who are expected to work for those 
measures ; and thence the gradation is easy to actual 
nominations by the order or by a farmers* conven- 
tion which it has called into being. With direct 
primaries in operation in most of the Western 
States, these movements no longer culminate in the 
formation of the third party but in ambitious eflForts 
to capture the dominant party in the State. Thus 
in Wisconsin the president of the state union of the 
American Society of Equity, a farmers' organiza- 
tion which has heretofore been mainly interested in 
cooperative buying and selling, was recently put 
forward by a "Farmers and Laborers Conference'* 
as candidate for the nomination for governor on 
the Republican ticket and had the active support 



\ 

\ 



198 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 

of the official organ of the society. In North 
Dakota, the Non-Partisan League, a farmers' or- 
ganization avowedly political in its purposes, cap- 
tured the Republican party a few years ago and 
now has complete control of the state government. 
The attempt of the League to seize the reins in 
Minnesota has been unsuccessful as yet, but Demo- 
cratic and Republican managers are very much 
alarmed at its growing power. The organized 
farmers are once more a power in Western politics. 
It is not, however, by votes cast and elections 
won or by the permanence of parties and organiza- 
tions that the political results of the agrarian cru- 
sade are to be measured. The People*s Party and its 
predecessors, with the farmers' organizations which 
supported them, professed to put measiu'es before 
men and promulgated definite programs of legisla- 
tion. Many of the proposals in these programs 
which were ridiculed at the time have long since 
passed beyond the stage of speculation and discus- 
sion. Regulation of railroad charges by national and 
state government, graduated income taxes, popular 
election of United States Senators, a parcels post, 
postal savings banks, and rural free delivery of mail 
are a few of these once visionary demands which 
have been satisfied by Federal law and constitutional 



i 



THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 199 

amendment. Anti-trust legislation has been en- 
acted to meet the demand for the curbing of mo- 
nopolies; and the Federal land bank system which 
has recently gone into operation is practically the 
proposal of the Northwestern AlUance for govern- j 
ment loans to farmers, with the greenback feature I 
eliminated. Even the demand for greater volume | 
and flexibility of currency has been met, though in \ 
ways quite different from those proposed by the 
farmers.' 

In general it may be said that the farmers' or- ] 
ganizations and parties stood for increased govern- U 
mental activity; they scorned the economic and | 
poUtical doctrine of laissezfaire; they beUeved that / 
the people's governments could aind should be used 
in many ways for promoting the welfare of the ; 
people, for assuring social justice, and for restoring 

* In July, 1894, when the People's Party was growing rapidly, the 
editor of the Review of Reviews declared: *' Whether the Populist 
party is to prove itself capable of amalgamating a great national 
political organization or whether its work is to be done through a 
leavening of the old parties to a more or less extent with its doctrines 
and ideas, remains to be seen. At present its influence evidently is 
that of a leavening ingredient." The inclusion of the income tax in 
the revenue bill put through by the Democratic majority in Congress 
was described as ** a mighty manifestation of the working of the Popu- 
list leaven"; and it was pointed out that '*the Populist leaven in the 
direction of free silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 is working yet more deeply 
and ominously." The truth of the last assertion was demonstrated 
two years later. 



200 THE A6RABIAN CRUSADE 

i or preserving economic as well as political equality. 
They were pioneers in this field of social politics^ 
.but they did not work alone. Independent re- 
formers, either singly or in groups, labor organiza- 
tions and parties, and radicals everywhere co5per- 
ated with them. Both the old parties were split 
into factions by this progressive movement; and in 
191S a Progressive party appeared on the scene and 
leaped to second place in its first election, only to 
vanish from the stage in 1916 when both the old 
parties were believed to have become progressive. 

The two most hopeful developments in American 
politics during recent years have been the progres- 
sive movement, with its program of social justice, 

^ and the growth of independent voting — both 
developments made possible in large part by the 

/^agrarian crusade. Perhaps the most significant 
contribution of the farmers' movement to American 
politics has been the training of the agricultural 
population to independent thought and action. No 
longer can a political party, regardless of its plat- 
form and candidates, count on the farmer vote as a 
certainty. The resolution of the Farmers' Alliance 
of Kansas *^that we will no longer divide on party 
lines and will only cast our votes for candidates of 
the people, by the people, and for the people, '* was 




THE LEAVEN OF RADICALISM 201 

a declaration of a political independence which the 
farmers throughout the West have maintained and 
strengthened. Each successive revolt took addi- 
tional voters from the ranks of the old parties; and, 
once these ties were severed, even though the wan- 
derers might return, their allegiance could be re- 
tained only by a due regard for their interests and 
desires. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The sources for the history of the agrarian crusade 
are to be found largely in contemporary newspapers, 
periodical articles, and the pamphlet proceedings of 
national and state organizations, which are too numer- 
ous to permit of their being listed here. The issues of 
such publications as the Tribune Almanac, the Annual 
Cyclopedia (1862-1903), and Edward McPherson*s 
Handbook of Politics (1868-1894) contain platforms, 
election returns, and other useful material; and some 
of the important documents for the Granger period are 
in volume x of the Documentary History of American 
Industrial Society (1911), edited by John R. Commons. 
When each wave of the movement for agricultural 
organization was at its crest, enterprising publishers 
seized the opportunity to bring out books dealing with 
the troubles of the farmers, the proposed remedies, and 
the origin and growth of the orders. These works, 
hastily compiled for sale by agents, are partisan and 
unreliable, but they contain material not elsewhere 
available, and they help the reader to appreciate the 
spirit of the movement. Books of this sort for the 
Granger period include: Edward W. Martin's {pseud, 
of J. D. McCabe) History of the Orange Moveraenl 
(1874), Jonathan Periam's The OroundsweU (1874), 
Oliver H. Kelley's Origin and Progress of the Order of 

20S 



204 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

the Patrons of Husbandry (1875), and Ezra S. Carr's 
The Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast (1875). 
Similar works induced by the Alliance movement are: 
History of the Farmers'* Alliance^ the Agricultural Whed, 
etc., compiled and edited by the St. Louis Journal of 
Agriculture (1890), Labor and Capital, Containing an 
Account of the Various Organizations of Farmers, Plant- 
ersy and Mechanics (1891), edited by Emory A. Allen, 
W. Scott Morgan's History of the Wheel and Alliance 
and the Impending Revolviion (1891), H. R. Chamber- 
lain's The Farmers* Alliance (1891), The Farmers* Alli- 
ance History and Agricultural Digest (1891), edited by 
N. A. Dunning, and N. B. Ashby's The Riddle of the 
Sphinx (1890). Other contemporary books dealing 
with the evils of which the farmers complained are: 
D. C. Cloud's Monopolies and the People (1873), Wil- 
liam A. Peflfer's The Farmer's Side (1891), James B. 
Weaver's A Call to Action (1891), Charles H. Otken's 
The Ills of the South (1894), Henry D. Lloyd's Wealth 
against Commonwealth (1894), and William H. Harvey's 
Coin's Financial School (1894). 

The nearest approach to a comprehensive account 
of the farmers' movement is contained in Fred E. 
Haynes's ThirdParty Movements Since the Civil War , 
with Special Reference to Iowa (1916) . The first phase of 
the subject is treated by Solon J. Buck in The Granger 
Movement (1913), which contains an extensive bibli- 
ography. Frank L. McVey's The Populist Movement 
(1896) is valuable principally for its bibliography of 
contemporary material, especially newspapers and 
magazine articles. For accountis of agrarian activity 
in the individual States, the investigator turns to the 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 9M 

many state histories without much satisfaction. Nor 
can he find monographic studies for more than a few 
States. A. E. Paine's The Granger Movement in lUv- 
nois (1904 University of Illinois Studies, vol. i, No. 
8) and Ellis B. Usher's The Greenback Movement of 
1875-1884' and Wisconsin's Part in It (1911) practically 
exhaust the list. Elizabeth N. Barr's The Populist 
Uprising^ in volume n of William E. Connelley 's Stand- 
ard History of Kansas (1918), is a vivid and sympa- 
thetic but uncritical narrative. Briefer articles have 
been written by Melvin J. White, Populism in Louisi- 
ana during the Nineties^ in the Mississippi Valley His- 
torical Review (June, 1918), and by Ernest D. Stewart, 
The Populist Party in Indiana in the Indiana Magazine 
of History (December, 1918). Biographical material 
on the Populist leaders is also scant. For Donnelly 
there is Everett W. Fish's DonneUiana (1892), a curi- 
ous eulogy supplemented by "excerpts from the wit, 
wisdom, poetry and eloquence" of the versatile hero; 
and a life of General Weaver is soon to be issued by the 
State Historical Society of Iowa. William J. Bryan's 
The First Battle (1896) and numerous biographies of 
"the Commoner" treat of his connection with the 
Populists and the campaign of 1896. Herbert Croly's 
Marcus A. Hanna (1912) should also be consulted in 
this connection. 

Several of the general histories of the United States 
since the Civil War devote considerable space to vari- 
ous phases of the farmers' movement. The best in 
this respect are Charles A. Beard's Contemporary Ameri- 
can History (1914) and Frederic L. Paxson's The 
New Nation (1915). Harry Thurston Peck's Twenty 



206 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

Years of the Republic, 1886-1905 (1906) contains an 
entertaining account of Populism and the campaign of 
1896. Pertinent chapters and useful bibliographies will 
also be found in the following volumes of the American 
Nation: William A. Dunning's Reconstruction, Political 
and Economic, 1866-1877 (1907), Edwin E. Sparks's 
National Development, 1877-1886 (1907), and David 
R. Dewey's National Problem^y 1886-1897 (1907). 



INDEX 



Adams, C. F., candidate for 
presidential nomination, 15 

Adams, D. W., Master of Na- 
tional Grange, 27 

Agricultural Wheel, 116-17; 
see also National Agricul- 
tural Wheel 

Aiken, D. W., on executive com- 
mittee of National Grange, 
27; quoted, 61-62 

Alabama, Grange relief sent to, 
75 

Allen, Judge W. V., sent to 
United States Senate, 164- 
165, 184; quoted, 188 

Alliance movement, see Farm- 
ers' Alliance 

Altgeld, J. P., elected Governor 
of Illinois, 150 

American Bimetallic League, 
170 

American Federation of Farm- 
ers, 196 

American Societj of Equity, 
197 

"American System of Fi- 
nance," 80 

Anthony, Susan B., speaks at 
National party convention, 
94 

Antu Monopolist, Donnelly 
starts publication of, 41; 
activity, 86 

Anti- Monopoly Organization 
of the United States, con- 
vention at Chicago (1884), 
96; see also Anti-Monopoly 
party 



Anti- Monopoly party, 81; 
Donnelly as leader, 89, 41; 
antagonism toward rail- 
roads, 50 

Arkansas, Agricultural Wheel 
originates in Prairie County, 
116; Union Labor party in, 
127; fusion tickeU (1896), 
188 

Banks and banking, ««e Finance 

Barker, Wharton, radical Popu- 
list candidate (1900), 194 

Barr, E. N., The Populist Up- 
rising, cited, 134 (note) 

"Battle of the Standards," 
campaign of 1896, 189 

Bland, R. P., Bryan and, 179; 
" Father of Free Silver, " 181 

Brothers of Freedom, 116 

Brown, B. G., elected Governor 
of Missouri, 14; candidate 
for presidential nomination, 
16 

Bryan, W. J., at Democratic 
convention (1896), 177; life, 
177-78; interest in politics, 
178; editor Omaha World- 
Herald, 179; in Congress, 
179; personal appearance, 
180; convention speech 
quoted, 180-81; nomination, 
181, 186; and People's Party, 
186, 191; campaign, 189-90; 
defeat, 190, 191 

Buchanan, James, and Na- 
tional Greenback party, 82, 
127 



207 



208 



INDEX 



Butler, General B. F., and 
silver question, 90; presiden- 
tial nomination, 96-97 

California and Populist party, 
151 

Cary, S. F., Independent nomi- 
nee for Vice-President (1876), 
85 

Chambers, B. J., nominated 
for Vice-President, 94 

Chase, Solon, on inflation, 90- 
91 

Chicago, Grange established 
in, 6; Independent meeting 
(1876), 85; National party 
convention (1880), 98-94; 
meeting of Northwestern 
Alliance (1881), 119; Demo- 
cratic convention (1896), 
175-77, 180-81 

Cincinnati, Liberal-Republi- 
can convention (1872), 14, 
15; convention of Citizens' 
Alliance and Knights of 
Labor (1891), 140 

Citizens' Alliance, 140 

Civil service. Liberal Repub- 
lican platform on, 15; de- 
mand for reform of, 85 

Civil War, agriculture after, 19 

Clark, J. G., 151; People* s 
Battle Hymn, 148 

Cleveland, Grover, and free 
silver, 169; Tillman and, 
169, 176 

Cleveland, Independent party 
convention (1875), 82-83 

Colorado, Populist success 
(1892), 149; Republican in 
1894, 168 

Colored Farmers* Alliance, 123 

Columbus (0.)» Grange es- 
tablished in, 6; National 
Labor party convention 
(1872), 80 

Congress, agricultural repre- 
sentation in, 24; specie- 
resumption act (1875), 83, 



94; Silver Purchase Act, 182, 
159-60,''165; demonetizes sil^ 
ver (1878), 156-57; Bland- 
Allison act, 158, 159, 160, 
178 

Cooper, Peter, candidate for 
Presidency, 84-85 

Cooperation, 65 et seq,; co- 
operative stores, 66-68; 
"Rochdale plan," 67-68, 
71; Northwestern Alliance 
and, 119 

Corning, Cyrus, 134 

Corwin, £. S., John Marshall 
and the ConstittUion, cited, 
46 (note) 

Coxey, J. S., 170 

"Crime of '73," 156 

Curtin, A. G., and Liberal 
Republican party, 15 

Curtis, B. R., 51 

Daniel, J. W., at Democratic 
convention (1896), 175 

Davis, Judge David, and Lib- 
eral Republican party, 15; 
candidate for presidential 
nomination, 15-16; nomi- 
nated by National Labor 
party (1872), 80; considered 
as candidate by National 
Greenback party (1876), 84; 
Senator, 87-88 

Democratic party, after Civil 
War, 11-12; and Liberal 
Republicans, 16-17; makes 
common cause with new 
parties, 31; in Illinois (187S), 
34; attitude on currency 
question, 79; firm establish- 
ment of, 97-98, 125; disap- 
pointment in, 126; victory 
in Nebraska (1890), 138; 
platform (1892), 146-47; and 
Populist party, 149-50, 153; 
and free silver, 158, 175 et 
seq.; success in South Caro- 
lina (1894), 169; conventioa 
(1896), 175-77, 180-81 



Detroit, Greenback confereiice 
(1S7S). 86 

Diggs, Add& I.., 134 

Diliaye, S. D., refuaea presi- 
dential DomiiiatioD, OS 

Donnelly. Ignatius, 18; Anti- 
Monopoliat leader. 39, 41; 
life and character, 39-42; 
Facitfor the Grangeri, 81; on 
inflation, 81-6i: temporary 
chBirmau of National Green- 
back convention (18TS), 8S; 
heads Populist ticket in 
Minnesota (1S92), ISO; op- 
ponent of party fuaion, 170, 
1S4, 194; death (1901), 195 

East, Grange movement re- 
Urded in, 80-27 

Electioaa, State elections 
(1877). 88 (note); of 1878. 
00; of 1880, 03'9S; of 1896. 
172-91; of 1900, 194; of 
1904, 194-S5; of 1908, 19S 

England, conflicting intercats 
with United States, 161 

Europe, agricultiunl condi- 
tions in 18SS, 99 

Evarts, W. M., 51 

Fairchild, George T., quoted, 
\0i 

Farmers' Alliance, 111 «f teq.; 
bibliography, 804 

Farmers Alliance of Kansas, 

. resolution. 200-01 

"Fanners ana Laborers Con- 
ference" makes nomination 
for Governor in Wisconsin, 
197 

Farmers' and Laborers' Union 
of America, 117, 122 

Farmers' clubs, organ! lation 
of, 29-90 

Farmeri' Deelaratiott cf Inde- 
pendtnct, 33-S4 

Farmers' Fourth of July (1873), 



lis 

Fenton, R. E., and Liberal 
Republican party, IS 

Field, GeneralJ.G., candidate 
for Vice-President. 146, 147 

Finance, panic of 1878, 21, 81; 
farm loan bBnka,21; demand 
for currency reform. 85; cur- 
rency inflation and Green- 
back movement, 77 el eeq., 
110; "AmericBQ System of 
Finance, " 80; panic of 1893, 
104; mortgages, 105-07; 
press comment on eiiatiug 
system, 108-09; Southern 
Alliance report on mone- 
tary system (1889). 130-31; 
Northwestern Alliance pro- 
posals. 131; monetary planks 
in Populist platform (1892), 
143; Federal land bank sys- 
tem, 199; tee alio Gold 
standard. Prices, Silver 

Plagg, W. C, president of 
Illinois State Farmers' Asso- 
ciation. 36 

Florida, Alliance forms Demo- 
cratic platform in (1890), 
139; election of 18S6, 188- 
189 

Fredonia (N. Y.), Grange es- 
tablished in. 6 

Free Trade League, leaders 
join Liberal Republicaas. 14 

George, Henry, 127 
George, Milton, founder of 
National Farmers' Alliance, 



Godkin, E. L., 14, 19 
Gold standard, party plat- 
forms on, 140-47; CougreM 



SIO 



INDEX 



Gold Standard — Continued 
authorizes, 156; in Republi- 
can platform (1896), 174-75 

Grange movement, inception, 
letseq.; at flood tide, 25 et 
seq.; and railroad regulation, 
43 et seq.; collapse, 60 et eeq.; 
social and intellectual stimu- 
lus from, 71-76; ritual, 73- 
74; bibliography, 203-04; 
see also National Grange of 
the Patrons of Husban(&y 

Grant, U. S., and spoils, 12; 
nomination (1872), 16 

Greeley, Horace, joins Liberal 
Republicans, 15; nomina- 
tion for President (1872), 16, 
80; campaign, 16-17; Don- 
nelly supports, 41 

Greenback Clubs, 86, 93 

Greenback Labor party, re- 
form parties merged with, 
35; National party called, 
89; decline, 96, 127; finan- 
cial demands, 155; see also 
National party. National 
Greenback party 

Greenback movement, 77 et 
seq.; State elections (1877), 
88 (note) 

Gresham, Judge W. Q., Popu- 
lists consider nomination of, 
145 

Grosh, Rev. A. B., Grange 
founder, 4 

Hall, Carrie, niece of Kelley, 3 

Hallowell, Colonel J. R., Simp- 
son and, 136, 137 

Hanna, M. A., 172-74 

Harrisburg (Penn.)» Grange es- 
tablished at, 6 

Harvey, W. H., Coin*s Finan" 
cial School, 160-61 

Hayes, R. B., vetoes Bland- 
Allison bill, 158 

Hill, D. B., defends gold plank 
at Democratic convention, 
176 



Hoar, E. R., 51 
Hobart, G. A., nominated for 
Vice-President, 175 

Idaho, Populist suecess in 
(1892), 149; Republican in 
1894, 168 

Illinois, independent farmers' 
organizations, 30; political 
action of farmers in, 31-32; 
campaign of 1873 in, 34; 
railroad regulation, 45, 47- 
49, 52, 55i Grange plans 
implement factory in, 70; 
Greenback movement, 81, 
85, 87; codperative creamer- 
ies, 119; election of 1892, 150 

Inmiigration, restriction fa- 
vored by Populist party, 144; 
Republicans favor restric- 
tion, 147 

Independent party, 31, 133; 
platform, 83-84; campaign 
(1876), 85; see also Natiojud 
Greenback party 

Independent Reform party in 
Illinois, 87 

Indiana, Grange plans imple- 
ment factory, 70; Green- 
back movement, 81-82, 85, 
87; drought (1895), 105; 
election of 1890, 138 

Indianapolis, Greenback con- 
ference, 82; Independent 
party nominating conven- 
tion, 83 

Indianapolis Star, 86 

Industrial Age, Noonan's, 86 

Industrial League of the 
United States, 164 

Industrial party, 133 

International Monetary Con- 
ference of Paris, 156 

Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission, Granger laws pave 
way for, 56 

Iowa, Kelley in, 2; Grange or- 
ganization, 25, 30; railroad 
regulation 45, 47» 50-5 L 



INDEX 



«11 



Iowa — Continued 

58; senate resolutions re- 
garding lobbyists for rail- 
roads, 53-54; Grange plans 
implement factory in, 70; 
Greenback movement in, 87; 
Populist party in, 150; elec- 
tion of 1896, 191 

Ireland, W. M., Grange found- 
er, 4 

Johnson, Andrew, authorizes 
investigating trip to South- 
ern States, 1 

Jones, J. K., at Democratic 
convention (1896), 177 

Kansas, agricultural clubs of 
political complexion, 80; 
Grange plans implement fac- 
tory, 70; Green oack move- 
ment, 87; mortgaged land, 
106; Union Labor party, 
127; political revolt and 
social upheaval (1890), 184- 
187, 189; Populist success, 
149; storm-center in na- 
tional politics (1898), 165- 
166; Republican in 1894, 168; 
Farmers' Alliance of, 200- 
201 

Kansas Farmer, Peffer editor 
of, 140 

Kearney, Dennis, at National 
party convention (1880), 94 

Kelley, O. H., investigation 
in South, 1, 2; life and char- 
acter, 1-8; founds Grange, 
8-4; Grange Secretary, 4, 
27; organizes Grange, 5-10; 
quoted, 65 

Kentucky, Grange plans im- 
plement factory, 70; dele- 
gates attend meeting of 
Agricultural Wheel (1886), 
117; fusion of parties (1896), 
188; McKinley carries, 191 

Kirkwood, S. J., 92 

Knights of Labor, 127, 140 



Kyle, Rev. J. H., elected to 
Senate, 188-89; presidential 
possibility, 145 

Lampasas (Tez.)> farmers' 
alliance organized, ] 12 

Land, alien ownership op- 
posed, 148; Democratic de- 
mands (1892), 147 

Lease, C. L., husband of Mary 
E., 185 

Lease, Mary Elizabeth, 184, 
167; life and character, 185; 
quoted, 185-86; in campaign 
of 1892, 147, 151 

Liberal Reform party, Taylor 
and, 88 

Liberal Republican party, 14- 
18; in Missouri, 81 

Louisiana, Grange relief sent 
to, 75; Farmers' Union, 115; 
press comment on Populist 
campaign, 148-49; fusion of 
parties (1896), 188 

McDowell, F. M., Grange 
founder, 4 

McKinley, William, candidate 
for Presidency (1896), 178- 
175; campaign, 189; elec- 
tion, 190-91; PeflFer sup- 
ports, 195 

Macune, C. W., and Texas 
Alliance, 115; president of 
National Farmers' Alliance, 
115-16; quoted, 128-29; 
chairman of monetary com- . 
mittee, 180 

Manufacturers, farmers' rela- 
tions with, 64-65, 71 

Manufacturing, Grange activi- 
ties, 68-70 

Martin, John, and silver, 168 

Meridian (Miss.)» joint confer- 
ence of agricultural orders 
at, 117 

Michigan, Greenback move- 
ment in, 87; drought (1895)» 
105; election of 1890, 188 



212 



INDEX 



Middlemen, farmers' relations 
with, 68^64, 71 

Minnesota, Kelley in, 2, 6; 
Grange movement in, 8-9, 
25, 30; railroad regulation, 
45, 46-47, 49-50, 65; Alli- 
ance grain elevators in, 119; 
election of 1890, 188; Popu- 
list party in, 150; press 
comment on Populist party, 
152; election of 1896, 191; 
Non-Partisan League in, 198 

Minnesota State Alliance, po- 
litical aims, 120 

Mississippi, Grange organiza- 
tion, 25 

Missouri, Democracy in, 31; 
Liberal Republican party in, 
31; Grange plans implement 
factory, 70; Grange relief 
sent to, 75; Union Labor 
party in, 127; Populist party 
m, 150; fusion of parties 
(1896), 188 

Murdock, Victor, 136 

Nation quoted, 16 

National , Agricultural Wheel, 
117 

National Farmers' Alliance, 
118; resolutions (1887), 121; 
see also Northwestern Alli- 
ance 

National Farmers' Alliance 
and Cooperative Union of 
America, 115 

National Farmers' Alliance 
and Industrial Union, 122 

National Grange of the Pa- 
trons of Husbandry, organi- 
zation, 4; motto, 4; '* De- 
claration of Purposes of the 
National Grange," 28; ob- 
jections to, 29; farmers' 
attitude toward, 62; see 
also Grange movement 

National Greenback party, 82; 
see also Greenback Labor 
party 



National Labor party* 80 

National Labor Union, 79, 80 

National party, name adopted 
at Toledo convention^ 89; 
campaign of 1880, 93-95; 
in later elections, 96-97; 
convention at Indianapolis 
(1884), 96-97; see also Green- 
back Labor party 

Nebraska, election of 1890, 
137-38; Populist, 150; elec- 
tion of 1894, 168 

Negroes, excluded from Farm- 
ers* Alliance, 113, 122; sepa- 
rate lodges for, 117 (note); 
Colored Farmers' Alliance, 
123 

Nevada, Populist success in, 
149; election of 1894, 168 

Newton (Iowa), Grange estab- 
lished at, 8 

Non- Partisan League, 198 

North Carolina, Alliance forms 
Democratic platform ri890)» 
133; fusion of parties (1896), 
188 

North Dakota, Alliance grain 
elevators in, 119; Populist 
success in, 149; Republican 
in 1894, 168; election of 
1896, 191; Non-Partisan 
League, 198 

Northwestern Alliance, foun- 
dation, 118; platform, 119, 
131; meets with Southern 
Alliance, 122; decline, 124; 
quotation from speech at 
meeting, 126; see also Na- 
tional Farmers' Alliance 

Norton, S. F., at Populist con- 
vention (1896), 186 

Ocala (Fla.)f meeting of South* 
em Alliance at (1890), 128 

O* Conor, Charles, 51 

Ohio, drought in (1895), 105 

"Ohio idea, "155 

Oklahoma, Weaver and open- 
ing of, 98 



INDEX 



213 



Omaha, Populist party organ- 
ized at, ] 42; Bryan at Demo- 
cratic convention (1888), 178 

Oregon, and Populist party, 
151; election of 1896, 191 

Panics, see Finance 

Parker, Judge A. B., candidate 
for Presidency, 194 

Patrons of Husbandry, see 
Grange movement. National 
Grange of the Patrons of 
Husbandry 

Peffer, W. A., 184, 184; Sena- 
tor from Kansas, 139, 168, 
170; life, 139-40; Prohibi- 
tion candidate for Governor 
of Kansas, 195; becomes Re- 
publican, 195 

Pendleton, G. H., candidate 
for Presidency (1868), 155 

Pennsylvania, Greenback party 
in, 87 

Pensacola Address, 149 

People's Independent party in 
Nebraska, 137 

People's Party, 125 et seq.; 
adopts Alliance platform, 
129; decline of, 191-93; see 
also Populist party 

Philadelphia and Reading Rail- 
road Company, failure, 104 

Politics, agricultural clubs in, 
80-31; Alliances in, 119-21, 
128, 133-34; see also names 
of parties 

Pomeroy, M. M., and Green- 
back Clubs, 86; Brickdust 
Sketches, 86; Brick Pome- 
roy* s Democrat, 86 ; Hoi Drops, 
86; Meat for Men,S6; quoted, 
90; radical leader, 93 

Poolyille (Tex.)» non-partisan 
alliance organized, 112 

Populist party. organized 
(1892), 142; platform, 142- 
144; manifesto Feb. 22, 1895» 
154; relations to silver ques- 
tion, 162-63; contest with 



Republicans in Kansas 
Legislature, 165-68; and 
Democrats, 188; decline, 195; 
bibliography, 204-05; see 
also People's Party 

Prices, decline after Civil War, 
19; (1883-89), 102; (1891- 
92), 103-04; rise as result 
of McKinley Tariflf, 133- 
134; and silver standard, 162 

Producers' Convention in Illi- 
nois, 47 

Progressive party, 200 

Railroads, and the farmer, 22- 
23; government aid, 23; 
legislative reforms in Middle 
West. 82, 35; state regula- 
tion, 48 et seq,; distribution 
of favors, 53; "Granger" 
laws repealed, 55-56; Na- 
tional Alliance demands 
state regulation, 120, 121; 
government ownership, 129- 
130^ 143; regulation accom- 
plished, 198 

Ramsey, Alexander, governor 
of Minnesota, 89, 40 

Reconstruction in South, 12-13 

Referendum favored by Popu- 
list party, 144 

Reform party, 81 

Republican party, in control in 
North, 11-12; dissatisfac- 
tion with, 12, 14, 126, 134, 
153; Liberal Republican 
movement, 14 et seq.; nomi- 
nates Grant (1872), 16; 
supports new part^ in Mis- 
souri, 31; in Illinois (1873), 
34; attitude on currency 
question, 79; well estab- 
lished, 97-98, 125; in 1890, 
137-38; platform (1892), 
147; Populists seek control 
in South, 148-49; election of 
1892, 150; Weaver on, 151- 
152; and free silver, 158; 
in Kansas (1898), 165-67; 



214 



INDEX 



Republican party — Continued 
success in West (1894), 168; 
convention at St. Louis 
(1896), 172-75; Hanna and, 
173-74; gold standard, 174; 
campai^ of 1896, 189 

Resumption Act, gee Finance 

Review of Reviews on Populist 
party, 199 (note) 

Robertson, Colonel D. A., and 
Grange organization, 8 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 195 

St. Louis, seventh annual 
session of National Grange 
at, 28; Greenback conven- 
tion (1880), 98; joint meet- 
ing of agricultural alliances 
(1889), 122, 129; Republi- 
can convention (1896), 172; 
Populist convention (1896), 
182 

St. Paul, North Star Grange 
established at, 8 

Saunders, William, Grange 
founder, 4, 27 

Schurz, Carl, and Liberal-Re- 
publican movement, 14; and 
civil service reform, 15; and 
radical movements, 19 

Sewall, Arthur, candidate for 
Vice-President, 185, 188 

Shankland, E. R., of Iowa, 27 

Sherman, John, Secretary of 
Treasury, 159 (note) 

Silver, platform of National 
party on coinage of, 89, 90; 
agrarian demand for free, 
110, 120, 121, 132; People's 
Partyplatform and free, 129; 
Silver Purchase Act, 182, 
159-60, 165; party platforms 
on, 146-47; as issue, 154 et 
seq,; Bland- Allison act, 158, 
159, 160, 173; free coinage 
and the parties (1895), 169; 
Bryan and, 179, 180-81 

Simpson, "Sockless" Jerry, 
134, 136-37. 167 



Sloan, A. S., of Wisconsin, 18 

South, Kelley's trip to, 1, 2-3; 
reconstruction, 12-13; op- 
position to Grange move- 
ment, 26; development of 
farmers' alliances in, 112- 
117; Populist campaign in, 
147, 148-49; elections of 
1894, 168; Populists and Re- 
publicans in, 170; Democra- 
tic (1896), 191 

South Carolina, Grange or- 
ganization, 25; Grange relief 
sent to, 75; Alliance forms 
Democratic platform (1890), 
133; Democratic in 1894, 169 

South Dakota, election of 1890, 
138; Independent party, 138; 
Populist party in, 150 

Southern Alliance, decline of, 
123-24; in politics, 128; see 
also Farmers' and Laborers' 
Union of America, National 
Farmers' Alliance and Co- 
operative Union of America, 
National Farmers' Alliance 
and Industrial Union, Texas 
Alliance 

Sovereign, J. R., in Coin's 
Financial School, 161 

Spectator (London), quotation 
from, 99 

Streeter, A. J., Union Labor 
candidate for President, 127, 
128 

Supreme Court, Dartmouth 
College case, 46; and rail- 
road laws, 54; "Granger 
cases," 56-57; Munn vs. 
Illinois, 57; Olcott vs. The 
Supervisors, cited, 58 (note); 
and Minnesota rate regula- 
tion, 59 

Tariff, Liberal -Republican 
party on, 15; hardship for 
farmers, 20; demand for re- 
form, 35, 132; McKinley, 
134 



INDEX 



215 



Taxation, issue of People's 
Party, 129; graduated in- 
come tax, 198 

Taylor, W. R., Governor of 
Wisconsin, 36-38 

Teller, of Colorado, leaves 
Republican convention, 174- 
175 

Tennessee, delegates attend 
meeting of Agricultural 
Wheel (1886), 116-17; elec- 
tion of 1896, 188 

Texas, Union Labor party in, 
127; election of 1896, 189 

Texas Alliance, 112-15 

Thompson, J. R.» Grange 
founder, 4 

Tilden, S. J., 88 

Tillman, Benjamin, and Cleve- 
land, 169, 176 

Trimble, Rev. John, Grange 
founder, 4 

Trumbull, Lyman, candidate 
for Presidential nomination, 
16; and radical movements, 
19; Bryan and, 178 

Toledo (O.). conference organ- 
izes National party, 88-90 

Tribune, Chicago, on Buchan- 
an, 82 

Trusts, anti-trust legislation, 
199 

Union Labor party, 127 
Union Pacific Railroad, Na- 
tional Alliance and, 121 
United States Pomological 
Society, Grange interest 
aroused at meeting of, 4 

Vale, J. G., of Iowa, 36 

Waite, Chief Justice M. R.» 



lays down principles for 
railroad cases, 57 

Washburn, E. B., 40 

Washburn, W. D., 40 

Washington, Populist party in, 
151 

Watson, T. E., Populist candi- 
date for Vice-President, 185, 
188; nominated for Presi- 
dent, 194 

Wealth, increase in forty years 
(1890), 101 

Weaver, General J. B., life and 
character, 91-93; Presiden- 
tial nomination, 94; presides 
over Greenback convention, 
96-97; Populist candidate 
for President (1892), 145- 
146, 147, 151; on Republican 
party, 151-52; seeks party 
fusion, 170; on nomination 
of Bryan, 186; goes over to 
Democratic party, 195 

Wells, D. A., 14 

West Virginia, election of 1896, 
191 

White, S. M., at Democratic 
convention (1896), 175 

Wisconsin, railroad regulation, 
45, 50-51; Constitution on 
corporation laws, 46; Potter 
law, 51, 66; Grange plans 
implement factory, 70; cur- 
rency question in, 88 (note) ; 
political activity of farmers' 
organizations, 197-98 

Women, admitted to Grange, 
3, 73; life on farm, 72; 
suffrage favored^ by National 
party, 94; admitted to Alli- 
ance, 113 

Wyoming, Republican in 1894» 
168 



AN OUTLINE OF THE PLAN OF 
THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA 






The fifty dties of the Series fall into dght topical sequences or groups, 
each with a dominant theme of its own— 



I. T^he Morning of America 
time: 1 492- 1 763 

THE theme of the first sequence b the struggle of nations for the 
possession of the New World. The mariners of four European king« 
doms — Spain, Portugal, France, and England — are intent upon the 
discovery of a new route to Asia. They come upon the American continent 
which blocks the way. Spain plants colonies in the south, lured by gold. 
France, in pursuit of the fur trade, plants colonies in the north. Englishmen, 
in search of homes and of a mder freedom, occupy the Atlantic seaboard. 
These Englishmen come in rime to need the land into which the French 
have penetrated by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and a 
mighty struggle between the two nations takes place in the wilderness, 
ending in the expulsion of the French. This sequence comprises ten volumes: 

1. THE RED man's CONTINENT, hy EllswoTth Hunttngton 

2. THE SPANISH CONQUERORS, by Irvitig Berdinc Richman 

3. EUZABETHAN SEA-DOGS, by IfVilHam Wood 

4. CRUSADERS OP NEW PRANCE, ky William Bennett Munro 

5. PIONEERS OP THE OLD SOUTH, by Moty Johnston 

6. THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND, by Chotles M. Andrews 

7. DUTCH AND ENQUSH ON THE HUDSON, by Maud Wilder Goodwin 

8. THE QUAiCER COLONIES, by Sydney G, Fisher 

9. COLONIAL FOLKWAYS, by ChorUs M, Andrews 

la THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCS, by GcoTge M, Wrwi^ 



208 



INDEX 



Butler, General B. F., and 
silver question, 90; presiden- 
tial nomination, 96-97 

California and Populist party, 
151 

Cary, S. F., Independent nomi- 
nee for Vice-President (1876), 
85 

Chambers, B. J., nominated 
for Vice-President, 94 

Chase, Solon, on inflation, 90- 
91 

Chicago, Grange established 
in, 6; Independent meeting 
(1876), 85; National party 
convention (1880), 93-94; 
meeting of Northwestern 
Alliance (1881), 119; Demo- 
cratic convention (1896), 
175-77, 180-81 

Cincinnati, Liberal-Republi- 
can convention (1872), 14, 
15; convention of Citizens' 
Alliance and Knights of 
Labor (1891), 140 

Citizens' Alliance, 140 

Civil service. Liberal Repub- 
lican platform on, 15; de- 
mand for reform of, 35 

Civil War, agriculture after, 19 

Clark, J. G., 151; People's 
Battle Hymn, 148 

Cleveland, Grover, and free 
silver, 169; Tillman and, 
169, 176 

Cleveland, Independent party 
convention (1875), 82-83 

Colorado, Populist success 
(1892), 149; Republican in 
1894, 168 

Colored Farmers* Alliance, 123 

Columbus (0.)» Grange es- 
tablished in, 6; National 
Labor party convention 
(1872), 80 

Congress, agricultural repre- 
sentation in, 24; specie- 

reaumptioD act (1875), 83. 



1 



94; Silver Purchase Act, 182, 
159-60,^165; demonetizes sil- 
ver (1873), 156-57; Bland- 
Allison act, 158, 159, 160, 
173 

Cooper, Peter, candidate for 
Presidency, 84-85 

Co5peration, 65 et seq.; co- 
operative stores, 66-68; 
"Rochdale plan," 67-68, 
71; Northwestern Alliance 
and, 119 

Corning, Cyrus, 134 

Corwin, £. S., John Marshall 
and the Constitution, cited, 
46 (note) 

Coxey, J. S., 170 

"Crimeof •73,"156 

Curtin, A. G., and Liberal 
Republican party, 15 

Curtis, B. R., 51 

Daniel, J. W., at Democratic 
convention (1896), 175 

Davis, Judge David, and Lib- 
eral Republican party, 15; 
candidate for presidential 
nomination, 15-16; nomi- 
nated by National Labor 
party (1872), 80; considered 
as candidate by National 
Greenback party (1876), 84; 
Senator, 87-88 

Democratic party, after Civil 
War, 11-12; and Liberal 
Republicans, 16-17; makes 
common cause with new 
parties, 31; in Illinois (1873), 
34; attitude on currency 
question, 79; firm establish- 
ment of, 97-98, 125; disap- 
pointment in, 126; victory 
in Nebraska (1890), 138; 
platform (1892), 146-47; and 
Populist party, 149-50, 153; 
and free silver, 158, 175 et 
seq.; success in South Caro- 
lina 0%^V^,\^V» <iWiN«alvam 



«04 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

the Patrons of Husbandry (1875), and Ezra S. Carr's 
The Patrons of Husbandry on the Pacific Coast (1875). 
Similar works induced by the Alliance movement are: 
History of the Farmers* Alliance^ the Agricultural Whed^ 
etc., compiled and edited by the St, Louis Journal of 
Agriculture (1890), Labor and Capital^ Containing an 
Account of the Various Organizations of Farmers^ Plant- 
erSf and Mechanics (1891), edited by Emory A. Allen, 
W. Scott Morgan's History of the Wheel and Alliance 
and the Impending Revolution (1891), H. R. Chamber- 
lain's The Farmers* Alliance (1891), The Farmers* Alli- 
ance History and Agricultural Digest (1891), edited by 
N. A. Dunning, and N. B. Ashby's The Riddle of the 
Sphinx (1890). Other contemporary books dealing 
with the evils of which the farmers complained are: 
D. C. Cloud's Monopolies and the People (1873), Wil- 
liam A. PeflFer's The Farmer's Side (1891), James B. 
Weaver's A Call to Action (1891), Charles H. Otken's 
The Ills of the South (1894), Henry D. Lloyd's Wealth 
against Commonwealth (1894), and William H. Harvey's 
Coin's Financial School (1894). 

The nearest approach to a comprehensive account 
of the farmers' movement is contained in Fred E. 
Haynes's Th ird Party Movements Since the Civil War ^ 
with Special Reference to Iowa (1916) . The first phase of 
the subject is treated by Solon J. Buck in The Granger 
Movement (1913), which contains an extensive bibli- 
ography. Frank L. McVey's The Populist Movement 
(1896) is valuable principally for its bibliography of 
contemporary material, especially newspapers and 
magazine articles. For accounts of agrarian activity 
in the individual States, the investigator turns to the